The Conservation Reserve Program: Economic Implications for Rural America

Sullivan, Patrick J.; Hellerstein, Daniel; Hansen, LeRoy; Johansson, Robert; Koenig, Steven R.; Lubowski, Ruben N.; McBride, William D.; McGranahan, David A.; Roberts, Michael J.; Vogel, Steven; Bucholz, Shawn

doi:10.2139/ssrn.614511

Cited by 76 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…For example, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in United States was initiated in 1980s with most of the first CRP contracts expiring at the beginning of the 21st century. The USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) predicted that about 51 percent of CRP land would have returned to crop production if all of its contracts ended in 2001 [37]. The first batch of GGP's contracts concluded at the end of 2012.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Cropland Conversion in Response to the “Grain for Green Project” in China’s Loess Hilly Region of Yanchuan County

Wang

Liu

2013

Remote Sensing

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Abstract:To prevent environmental degradation, China's central government launched the "Grain for Green Project" (GGP) in 1999. Since its beginning, the effects and influences of the GGP have been hotly debated among domestic and international scholars and policymakers. This paper is taking the County of Yanchuan in the Loess Plateau as a case study, examines the spatio-temporal patterns of cropland conversion in response to the GGP. This research is methodologically based on remote sensing (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS), and also employs personal interviews with local government officials and farmers. The results show that land use/cover patterns in Yanchuan County have changed dramatically after the implementation of GGP. Cropland has decreased remarkably, while orchard land and sparse forest has increased significantly: 23.84% of cropland was converted to orchard, and 22.25% to sparse forest. Simultaneously, the landscape has become more fragmented but also more diversified, forestland has become more dominant. A total of 61.19% of the total converted cropland was on slopes greater than 15 degrees, 64.85% of which was lower-grade land. The converted cropland is mostly located in more accessible areas for convenient management. Partially affected by farmers' self-willingness, sloping cropland was preferred to orchard (economic forest), and some gentle slope (less than 15 degrees) or higher-grade cropland were involved in the GGP. To maintain and reinforce the achievements of the GGP and further contribute to the GGP's sustainability and rural development, the paper recommends that the Chinese government should build a continuous compensation mechanism for the households who lost cropland for the GGP while improving the productivity of flat cropland.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Cropland Conversion in Response to the “Grain for Green Project” in China’s Loess Hilly Region of Yanchuan County

Wang

Liu

2013

Remote Sensing

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“…More research is also needed on how incentive-based mechanisms can account for potential tradeoffs and synergies in the production of multiple ecosystem services. Additional analysis of large-scale PES policies can help us to understand the broader effects on the economy from scaling-up PES schemes (12,13).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…usage and yet are based on the same theory. For example, the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has paid farmers to plant permanent vegetation on environmentally sensitive cropland since the mid1980s (13). PES schemes are similar in structure to other incentive-based policies for achieving environmental goals, as highlighted in Fig.…”

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confidence: 99%

Designing payments for ecosystem services: Lessons from previous experience with incentive-based mechanisms

Jack

Kousky

Sims

2008

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

634

360

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Payments for ecosystem services (PES) policies compensate individuals or communities for undertaking actions that increase the provision of ecosystem services such as water purification, flood mitigation, or carbon sequestration. PES schemes rely on incentives to induce behavioral change and can thus be considered part of the broader class of incentive-or market-based mechanisms for environmental policy. By recognizing that PES programs are incentive-based, policymakers can draw on insights from the substantial body of accumulated knowledge about this class of instruments. In particular, this article offers a set of lessons about how the environmental, socioeconomic, political, and dynamic context of a PES policy is likely to interact with policy design to produce policy outcomes, including environmental effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and poverty alleviation.environmental policy ͉ incentive payments ͉ market-based instruments

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“…Paterson and Bryan (2012) tackle an issue that has been of growing concern over the past decades, namely the impact on landscape and NRM caused by policies designed to produce environmental benefits in conjunction with maintenance of http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol18/iss1/art32/ productive farming and forestry. Such policies have been widespread from the mid-1980s in the European Union, following the creation of Environmentally Sensitive Areas (Hanley et al 1998, Wilson et al 2007, and in the United States, where the Conservation Reserve Program (Rao et al 2007, Sullivan et al 2004) and farmland preservation schemes have a long history (Dorfman et al 2009, Hellerstein andNickerson 2002). In recent years such measures have increasingly been linked directly to policy on climate change, and especially reductions in production of greenhouse gas emissions (Palm et al 2010).…”

Section: Developing Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying Landscape Science to Natural Resource Management

Robinson¹,

Carson²

2013

E&S

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This is the introduction to the Ecology and Society special feature on "Applying Landscape Science to Natural Resource Management". Primarily drawing upon examples from Australia, the nine papers in the feature illustrate how landscape science seeks to integrate information from diverse sources to generate management solutions for implementation by individual land managers, communities, and governments at different levels. This introduction refers to the genesis of the feature, briefly outlines the nature and content of landscape science, and then summarizes key features of the nine papers. These are organized into two sections: one deals with inputs from human agents in the landscape, and one with the development of models enabling different management scenarios and environmental changes to be envisaged, understood, and applied to policy development

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The Conservation Reserve Program: Economic Implications for Rural America

Cited by 76 publications

References 42 publications

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Cropland Conversion in Response to the “Grain for Green Project” in China’s Loess Hilly Region of Yanchuan County

Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Cropland Conversion in Response to the “Grain for Green Project” in China’s Loess Hilly Region of Yanchuan County

Designing payments for ecosystem services: Lessons from previous experience with incentive-based mechanisms

Applying Landscape Science to Natural Resource Management

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