Joint Production of Food and Wildlife: Uniform Measures or Nature Oases?
Hart, Rob ; Brady, Mark LU
and Olsson, Ola
LU
(2014)
In Environmental and Resource Economics
59(2).
p.187-205
- Abstract
- Intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife. Does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity? We argue that such an approach may not be optimal, since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non-convex, due to fixed costs associated with such provision. This implies that, even when farms are identical, it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers. We test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern Sweden, where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground-nesting birds, and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first... (More)
- Intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife. Does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity? We argue that such an approach may not be optimal, since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non-convex, due to fixed costs associated with such provision. This implies that, even when farms are identical, it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers. We test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern Sweden, where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground-nesting birds, and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first mowing. We show that the optimal solution is likely to involve some farmers maintaining profit-maximizing practices while other-identical-farmers delay their first mowing significantly. The superiority of such split solutions may have major implications for agricultural policy. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/4648838
- author
- Hart, Rob
; Brady, Mark
LU
and Olsson, Ola
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2014
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecological-economic modelling, Land sparing, Land sharing
- in
- Environmental and Resource Economics
- volume
- 59
- issue
- 2
- pages
- 187 - 205
- publisher
- Springer
- external identifiers
-
- wos:000340880700002
- scopus:84906787855
- ISSN
- 0924-6460
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10640-013-9723-2
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- cb47b7f1-30f4-4d05-b33b-f7730163b828 (old id 4648838)
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-01 14:31:04
- date last changed
- 2024-02-25 15:38:21
@article{cb47b7f1-30f4-4d05-b33b-f7730163b828,
abstract = {{Intensive agriculture is often bad for wildlife. Does this imply that a goal to boost wildlife on agricultural land is best met through a general reduction in intensity? We argue that such an approach may not be optimal, since cost functions for provision of wildlife on agricultural land may be non-convex, due to fixed costs associated with such provision. This implies that, even when farms are identical, it may be preferable to split them into groups of high providers and low providers. We test our hypothesis in a study of the optimal management of mown grasslands in southern Sweden, where the two products are silage and successful reproduction of ground-nesting birds, and the variable controlled by the farmer is the date of the first mowing. We show that the optimal solution is likely to involve some farmers maintaining profit-maximizing practices while other-identical-farmers delay their first mowing significantly. The superiority of such split solutions may have major implications for agricultural policy.}},
author = {{Hart, Rob and Brady, Mark and Olsson, Ola}},
issn = {{0924-6460}},
keywords = {{Agriculture; Biodiversity; Ecological-economic modelling; Land sparing; Land sharing}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{2}},
pages = {{187--205}},
publisher = {{Springer}},
series = {{Environmental and Resource Economics}},
title = {{Joint Production of Food and Wildlife: Uniform Measures or Nature Oases?}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10640-013-9723-2}},
doi = {{10.1007/s10640-013-9723-2}},
volume = {{59}},
year = {{2014}},
}