Ivestigators:  John Antle, Susan Capalbo, and Siân Mooney
Funding:  U.S. Department of Agriculture, Markets and Trade Program, National Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program

Soil carbon (C) sequestration can reduce the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as required under the Kyoto protocol. U.S. agriculture can play a significant role in the management of global atmospheric C. Changes in agricultural land use and management practices can sequester C in agricultural soils and could reduce U.S. emissions by up to eight percent (Lal et al. 1998). However, little research to date has examined how much it would cost to sequester C in agricultural soils.

Policy design for agricultural soil C sequestration is complicated by unresolved questions regarding the baseline level of soil C against which changes can be measured; the consequences of targeting payments to a range of producers; the "net carbon balance" resulting from altered practices among others. Each of these issues will affect the level of incentives required to induce producers to participate in the program and as such the success in terms of total C sequestered, cost per unit and production patterns (among other factors). These issues must be examined to design efficient policies for soil C sequestration and are addressed by this research. Develop a conceptual and empirical framework to examine the economic efficiency of policies designed to encourage the production of environmental services from agriculture.

1. Apply this framework to the problem of efficient policy design for agricultural soil carbon sequestration in the Great Plains dryland grain production. Field scale econometric production models are the basis for spatially explicit stochastic simulation models which will be linked with the Century ecosystem model to examine changes in agricultural soil carbon and production practices in response to a range of policy designs.
2. Examine the impact of each policy design on cropping (land use) patterns and management practices, expected net returns, and the costs per tonne and per hectare of C sequestered.