The effect of technical progress on erosion damage and economic incentives for soil conservation.

Abstract

A damage function which incorporates the long-run cost of erosion to a farmer is presented and applied to evaluate conservation tillage in the Palouse wheatland of the Pacific Northwest. The damage function used incorporates multiplicative technology impacts and employs a nonlinear topsoil-yield relationship. The damage function is the basis for a sequential normative model which prescribes whether farmers with specified time horizons and discount rates should adopt or should not adopt a conservation practice in any particular year. -R.K.Turner Univ of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA.