Cropland retirement is one option for reducing agriculturally generated nonpoint source water pollution. This research estimated the welfare effects of cropland retirement in addressing U.S. surface water pollution problems. The social costs of retirement were evaluated with a programming model...

Given that the majority of conservation reserve program (CRP) contracts on approximately 36 million acres of enrolled land expire concurrently, re-enrollment decisions by farmers and the federal government have high budgetary implications. Using a survey of over 8,000 CRP contract holders, we...

An important issue with regard to the overall effectiveness of conservation-tillage practices in reducing the impact of agricultural production on the environment concerns what happens to energy, pesticide and fertilizer use as these practices are more extensively adopted. To gain some insight...

The specific inputs considered, in addition to energy, are labor, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, pesticides, and water. The results show that input use is responsive to variations in own prices and that some limited substitution does occur between energy, labor, and nitrogen fertilizer.