ABSTRACT:
Five policy strategies aimed at retiring 10 million acres of cropland that overlies groundwater vulnerable to pesticides in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) are investigated. Strategies include marginal land retirement, retirement of the most vulnerable cropland, minimizing human exposure to groundwater contamination, minimizing pesticide use, and targeting current CRP-eligible cropland. The results show that average rental rates to retire cropland vary among the strategies. The marginal land retirement strategy has the lowest average national rental rate, while the minimizing pesticide use strategy has the highest rate. The Appalachian and Southeast regions generally show relatively low rental rates. These two regions possess large amounts of highly vulnerable cropland. Each strategy improves net farm income in most regions except in the Northeast. The net income in this region drops 17% under the minimizing human exposure strategy because a large portion of cropland in that region is removed from production. If the objectives of expanding the current CRP to protect groundwater quality also include helping farmers in regions where they are experiencing low returns from farming, a strategy that focuses on the Appalachian, Southeast, and Delta States regions would be desirable.
Footnotes
Wen-yuan Huang, Kenneth Algozin, David Ervin, and Terry Hickenbotham are agricultural economists with the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. 20005-4788.
- Copyright 1990 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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