Suchergebnisse

Improved fertilizer management practice in sugarcane production is a key component in plans to improve Great Barrier Reef (GBR) water quality. Research focused on understanding wider systemic factors that drive behavioral change in agriculture is currently limited, with the domi-nant focus on individual farmer and psychosocial factors. Adopting a wider systems perspective, this study examines farming behavior change and the role of supporting services among 238 sugarcane growers (74,597 hectares) in Queensland's Wet Tropics region who completed surveys reporting on changes in the method they used to calculate fertilizer application rates, along with information on their farm business, socio-demographics and self-reported importance ratings on a variety of topics. Informed by the Theory of Planned Behavior., ssurvey data are analyzed us-ing regression models to identify factors influencing the change from traditional to improved practice, and early adoption of improved practice. Results indicate growers were less likely to change fertilizer practice if they regarded maintaining good relationships with other local growers as being extremely important, had off-farm income, or had not attended a govern-ment-funded fertilizer management workshop in the five years preceding the survey. Similar drivers acted to promote or delay early adoption of improved practice. Results demonstrate the influence of government-funded services to support practice change.

AbstractMarkets in pollution permits for managing environmental quality have been advocated by economists since early 1970s as a mechanism that can deliver pollution reduction targets at lower cost to regulated entities than traditional uniform command-and control approaches. This study explores whether a 'smart market' cap-and-trade scheme between non-point sources can offer meaningful, robust and policy amenable, advantages over alternative approaches for nitrogen management in a realistic setting: 6504 individual farms in Limfjorden catchment, Denmark. The scheme involves multilateral trading of nitrogen emission rights among farms via changes in agricultural land management practices under a catchment-level cap on total nitrogen load. In this, the first exploration of non-point to non-point smart market nitrogen trading in a real setting, we estimate efficiency gains compared to uniform command-and-control regulation, explore the robustness of these gains in the face of non-participation, and reflect on farmers' potential acceptance of the trading market in comparison with its command-and-control analog: spatially-targeted regulation, implemented via location-specific limits on nitrogen leaching. Results indicate that the smart market has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of meeting the catchment's nitrogen reduction target. For a 21.5% reduction from baseline nitrogen load, the market delivers cost savings of 56% (DKK273 million, €36.6 million) compared to uniform regulation, with participating farms realising a mean net benefit of DKK 723/ha (€ 97/ha). Market performance is relatively robust against transaction cost; when delivering a 21.5% reduction in nitrogen load to Limfjorden, approximately 70% of the overall efficiency gain could be retained if only 24% of farms engaged with the market.

AbstractFreshwater ecosystems, such as wetlands, are among the most impacted by agricultural expansion and intensification through extensive drainage and pollution. There is a pressing need to identify ways of managing agricultural landscapes to ensure food and water security without jeopardising biodiversity and other environmental benefits. Here we examine the potential fish biodiversity and landholder financial benefits arising from the integration of constructed lagoons to improve drainage, flow regulation and habitat connectivity within a sugarcane dominated catchment in north Queensland, Australia. A hybrid approach was used, combining the findings of both fish ecological surveys and a financial cost-benefit analysis. We found that the constructed lagoons supported at least 36 native freshwater fishes (over half of all native freshwater fishes in the region), owing to their depth, vegetated margins, moderate water quality and high connectivity to the Tully River. In addition to biodiversity benefits, we estimated that surrounding sugarcane farms would have financially benefited from reduced flooding of cropland and the elevation of low-lying cropland with deposited spoil excavated from lagoon construction. Improved drainage and flow regulation allowed for improvement in sugarcane yield and elevated land increased gross margins from extending the length of the cane production cycle or enabling a switch from cattle grazing to cane production. Restoring or creating wetlands to reduce flooding in flood-prone catchments is a globally applicable model that could improve both agricultural productivity and aquatic biodiversity, while potentially increasing farm income by attracting payments for provision of ecosystem services.