The role of transaction costs and bargaining power in wildlife and landscape services production: a micro-econometric model for Dutch dairy farms /доклад на 10 конгрессе ЕААЕ, Exploring Diversity in the European Agri-Food System, Zaragoza, Spain, 28-31 August 2002 (original) (raw)
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In this paper a theoretical and empirical model is developed for analysing the decisions of individual farmers whether or not to produce wildlife and landscape services, how much of these services to produce and form an environmental cooperative in order to reduce transaction costs or to build up bargaining power. The model is applied for Dutch dairy farmers as the main users of agricultural land in the Netherlands. Simulations show that the reduction of transaction costs makes it attractive for farmers to form an environmental cooperative in case of a fixed price for wildlife and landscape services. Therefore more wildlife and landscape services are produced and more farmers are involved compared to a situation with individual supply. If demand is no longer perfectly elastic an increase in wildlife and landscape services production leads to lower prices offsetting part of the production and profit increase caused by lower transaction costs. However, if the environmental cooperative acts like a monopolist its bargaining position leads to a decrease in the production of wildlife and landscape services and higher prices.
Biotechnology Progress - BIOTECHNOL PROGR, 2005
Proposals of the European Commission stress the future importance of agri-environmental payments within the rural development policy of the European Union. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a model for choice for plant species protection contracts in the Netherlands. The model includes transaction costs, time and the possibility of lock-in situations related to contract choice. The approach discussed is flexible because it makes it possible to introduce all kinds of technical and institutional restrictions (differences in contract design).
Canadian Journal of Forest Research
This paper describes the development and implementation of a model to measure and compare transaction costs in situations of multiple-land use, where interdependence prevails between the agents-thus actions of one agent affects others. Transaction costs typically occur in situations where limited resources are used by more than one agent and bargaining of the use is conducted to mitigate conflict. The model of the paper is empirically tested on one such situation: forestry and reindeer husbandry, which is pursued in northern Sweden where transaction costs occur in common land use as a result of consultations. The results indicate that transaction costs are unevenly distributed between the two agents, where reindeer husbandry carries the highest costs resulting in uneven power relations. Transaction costs are driven by the presence of Land Use Plans of reindeer husbandry, interestingly enough driving the costs in different directions for the two agents. The model illustrates the elements of transaction costs in a common pool resource situation, and the results are not only useful for this specific situation in policymaking, but also to other similar situations.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyse land allocation between competing agri-environmental contracts taking into account institutional issues and farm household and farm characteristics. We consider a Biodiversity Protection Contract, Landscape Management Contract and a Restriction on Intensive Practises Contract. The paper shows that it is important to study the choice for an agrienvironmental contract in combination with the
Costs and benefits of on-farm nature conservation
Ecological Economics, 2007
The costs of on-farm nature conservation is an important issue in Dutch agriculture. As nature is a public good, nature conservation cannot do without subsidies from the government. The question of how much farmers should receive in subsidies in order to keep farms engaged in conservation activities is highly topical. In this article, the questions of how much farmers should receive in subsidies and what other factors motivate or demotivate farmers to participate in on-farm nature conservation are addressed. The study was carried out for a particular region in the northern Netherlands and was initiated by the concerns that farmers organisations had about the level of subsidies for landscape conservation as a major form of nature conservation on dairy farms in this region.
Land Sharing vs Land Sparing to Conserve Biodiversity: How Agricultural Markets Make the Difference
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We show that between intensive and extensive farming, the production method most beneficial to biodiversity depends on the equilibrium of agricultural markets. All other things equal, as long as demand reacts to prices and extensive farming has higher production costs, extensive farming tends to be more beneficial to biodiversity than intensive farming, except when there is a very high degree of convexity between biodiversity and yield. Extensive farming is detrimental to consumers when their surplus is evaluated restrictively, as increasing in quantities consumed, while its effect on agricultural producers is indeterminate. Extensive farming has no straightforward effect on food security, but could decrease the pressure on protected areas. Any increase in demand, notably for animal feed or biofuels, decreases biodiversity, regardless of the production method employed. However, additional demand reinforces the preference for extensive farming, especially in the case of animal feed, for which price elasticity is higher.
Ecological Economics, 2018
High Nature Value (HNV) farmland is declining in the EU, with negative consequences for biodiversity conservation. Agri-environment schemes implemented under the Common Agricultural Policy have addressed this problem, with recent proposals advocating direct support to HNV farming systems. However, research is lacking on the economics of HNV farming, which makes it difficult to set the level and type of support that ensure its sustainability. In this paper, we focused on a Special Protection Area for steppe bird conservation, analysing how economic incentives, biophysical and structural features govern the choice of farming system. We found that persistence of the traditional farming system important for steppe birds was associated with economic incentives, resistance to change, and good quality soils, whereas a shift to specialised livestock production systems was favoured by higher rainfall and less fragmented farms. A supply curve built using the choice model predicted that the proportion of traditional farming increased from 20% to 80% of the landscape, when economic incentives increased from about 100€/ha to 160€ha. Overall, our study highlights the dependence of HNV farming systems on economic incentives, and provide a framework to assess the effects of alternative policy and market scenarios to sustain farmland landscapes promoting biodiversity conservation.
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We introduce the local farmland market concepts in order to understand the operation of French farmland sale market. We perform an empirical analysis of farmland prices based on farmland sale market in the Bretagne Region of France. The descriptive statistics show that the price of farmer to farmer transactions is significantly higher than the non-farmer to non-farmer transactions by almost €830/ha. The log-linear estimations indicate that farmer sellers have higher bargaining power than non-farmer sellers. Because of the competition between farmers, when the sold area share of farmers increases by 50% at the municipality level, the price increases by €488/ha. Symmetric significant effect is measured on the demand side. For example, if the traded area share of farmers increases by 50% in the municipality, the price decreases by €172 /ha. The result on the supply side of traded land also reflects the higher willingness to accept (WTA) of farmers and the result on the demand side refl...