Concerns about the impact of farm production on the quality of the Nation's drinking and recreational water resources have risen over the past 10 years. Because point sources of pollution were controlled first, agricultural nonpoint sources have become the Nation's largest remaining single...

Public amenities provided by a rural agricultural landscape, arising from open space and farm activity, are important to many citizens and policymakers. Widespread development of farmland in some parts of the country has spawned an expanding array of farmland protection programs by county,...

Agri-environmental policy is at a crossroads. Over the past 20 years, a wide range of policies addressing the environmental implications of agricultural production have been implemented at the Federal level. Those policies have played an important role in reducing soil erosion, protecting and...

Environmental targeting directs program resources to lands where the greatest environmental benefit will be generated for a given expenditure. The CRP offers annual rental payments and cost-share assistance to farmers in exchange for the establishment of longterm resource-conserving covers....

Biological resources refer to the living landscape — the plants, animals, and other aspects of nature — and are important to society for the various services they provide, as well as problems they may create. Biological resources are grouped into those that affect agriculture, such as...

Discrete choice models generate welfare measures resulting from environmental quality changes on a per trip basis instead of over a longer, more policy-relevant time period. Seasonal or annual welfare measures resulting from a quality change are often computed by multiplying each individual′s...

The range of environmental problems confronting agriculture has expanded in recent years. As the largest program designed to mitigate the negative environmental effects of agriculture, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) has broadened its initial focus on reductions in soil erosion to...