Sound economic thinking is crucial for farmers because they depend on good economic decision making to survive. Governments depend on economic information to make good policy decisions on behalf of the community. This course will help you to contribute to better decision making by farmers, or by agencies servicing agriculture, and it will help you to understand why farmers respond to policies and economic opportunities in the ways they do. You can use this course to improve your skills and knowledge, and to assess whether this is a subject that you'd like to study further. The course includes high-quality video lectures, interviews with experts, demonstrations of how to build economic models in spreadsheets, practice quizzes, and a range of recommended readings and optional readings. Assessment is by a final exam. The key economic principles that we’ll learn about can help us understand changes that have occurred in agriculture, and support improved decision making about things like agricultural production methods, agricultural input levels, resource conservation, and the balance between agricultural production and its environmental impacts. There are literally thousands of agricultural economists around the world who work on these issues, so there is a wealth of knowledge to draw on for the course. Watch a brief video about our course here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_IeYGpeqV8
Video - Resource conservation in farming
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Из курса от партнера University of Western Australia
Agriculture, Economics and Nature
145 оценки
Из урока
The economics of land conservation
Week 4 focuses on evaluating land conservation practices, weighing benefits and costs correctly, non-economic factors, and provides an example in conservation agriculture.
Познакомьтесь с преподавателями
Professor David Pannell, BSc(Agric), BEc, PhDHead of School of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Western Australia
Jacob Hawkins, BA(Biol), MESM, PhDSchool of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Western Australia
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Resource conservation in agriculture
is an important concern of farmers.
There's a range of resources that they use,
that they need to protect for their future use.
So for example, soil conservation.
Farmers practice soil conservation
through reduced tillage methods, so reducing cultivation
of the soil when they plant their crops;
through retaining crop residues on the soil surface;
and sometimes through rotating between different types
of crops, where some crops provide
high levels of nutrition.
Legume crops might provide nitrogen
to subsequent cereal crops.
Water conservation-- through repairing vegetation,
with protecting water quality in rivers,
through establishing vegetation along river banks,
and through repairing erosion gullies.
Biodiversity conservation-- through revegetating
natural habitat; through excluding
stock, livestock from that natural habitat;
and through control of certain types
of pests that's environmentally damaging.
And pesticide conservation, particularly the preservation
of herbicides before they develop herbicide resistance--
through rotating herbicides and through developing pesticide
zones.
So adopting resource conservation
is a tricky decision.
A farmer's decision to adopt is complex
and multifaceted-- depends on various things.
One factor is the profitability of the practice,
but it's not the only consideration.
Other factors include convenience,
personal preference, and the attitude of the farmer
to the particular issue with a particular practice.
So the economics of these conservation practices
are important in the decision making.
All farming practices have benefits and costs,
and they include financial benefits and costs
and potentially non-financial benefits and costs.
And part of what we're interested in as economists
is how do these benefits and costs stack up.
It's not necessarily the case that financial benefits have
to exceed financial costs for a particular purpose
to be attractive enough to a farmer, but it certainly helps.
So let's look briefly at the example
of planting native trees on a farm.
There's a variety of costs and benefits involved
in this practice to farmers.
There are financial costs-- you can
see several listed there-- and financial benefits-- again,
several listed.
But there are also non-financial benefits
that a farmer might gain by their satisfaction
and happiness, utility from the fact
that they are doing good for the environment.
Now, there are a number of challenges
to the adoption of conservation practices, typically.
So they include things like the fact
that conservation practices often have delayed benefits.
You have upfront costs, but the benefits
don't occur until sometime in the future.
They may be considered to be more risky or more uncertain
by the farmer, compared to the practices
that they normally do on the farm.
And there may be impacts on other enterprises on the farm.
So let's talk a little bit more about each of those three,
starting with delayed benefits.
So costs of conservation are usually incurred up front.
There may be ongoing costs, but the bulk of the costs
usually occur at the start of the use of a conservation
practice.
On the other hand, benefits are often delayed.
So trees grow slowly, and the take
time before they would deliver the benefits
that they were planted for.
So for example, they take time before they
become useful habitat for wildlife.
Or the degradation that you are hoping
to prevent-- such as soil degredation--
is predicted to occur sometime in the future,
and you're planting trees now to prevent
that future degradation.
But there's a lag before the benefits
are realized because the damage wouldn't have occurred
'til sometime in the future.
So how should this be considered in economic analysis?
That's something that we'll be talking about later
on in this series of talks.
Let's look at risk and uncertainty.
Conservation practices can be quite unfamiliar
and may involve sizable management changes for farmers.
And so the benefits and costs that they'll
get from adopting these practices
could be quite uncertain.
So they plant trees for wildlife,
but they're unsure how much difference they'll
make to the local wildlife that they're hoping to help.
Or they may plant trees to reduce future dry land
salinity, but they're not sure how much salinity would occur
in the future-- or when it would occur.
So conservation practices may be perceived as being more risky.
Seedlings might die, or trees might
be lost in bushfires or wildfires.
So some farmers may prefer to avoid
those risks and that uncertainty.
And this is called risk averse.
There's lot of study in agricultural economics
in the risk attitudes of farmers.
And it's been found that most farmers have
a degree of risk aversion.
Finally, there may be impacts on other farming enterprises.
Conservation practices might affect other enterprises,
such as there may be obstruction to farming machinery-- moving
around the farm.
Or if we're planting trees, that might
provide habitat which causes an increase
in the number of pests.
They might shelter pests, which then increase in number
and move on to the rest of the farm.
On the other hand, there could be spin-off benefits
from planting trees through shelter
that's provided to livestock or reduced wind erosion of soils.
So in summary, profitability helps
to make practices more attractive to farmers,
although non-financial factors also play an important role.
Resource conservation practices often have delayed benefits.
They're often somewhat risky and uncertain,
and they may have impacts on other enterprises.
And so these can be key barriers to their wider adoption
by farmers.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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