Jonathan D. Kaplan

Manure Management for Water Quality Costs to Animal Feeding Operations of Applying Manure Nutrients to Land

Nutrients from livestock and poultry manure are key sources of water pollution. Ever-growing numbers of animals per farm and per acre have increased the risk of water pollution. New Clean Water Act regulations compel the largest confined animal producers to meet nutrient application standards when applying manure to the land, and USDA encourages all animal feeding operations to do the same. The additional costs for managing manure (such as hauling manure off the farm) have implications for feedgrain producers and consumers as well. This reports farm-level analysis examines on-farm technical choice and producer costs across major U.S. production areas for hauling manure to the minimum amount of land needed to assimilate manure nutrients. A regional analysis then focuses on off-farm competition for land to spread surplus manure, using the Chesapeake Bay region as a case study. Finally, a sectorwide analysis addresses potential long-term structural adjustments at the national level and ultimate costs to consumers and producers.

The Manure Hits the Land: Economic and Environmental Implications When Land Application of Nutrients Is Constrained

The discharge of manure nutrients into area waters from confined animal feeding operations is considered a leading contributor to U.S. water quality impairments. An option to mitigate these impairments is to constrain land application of manure. When these constraints are particularly binding, due to minimal acceptance of manure as a substitute for commercial fertilizer, potentially large and unanticipated changes in returns to agricultural production and water quality may occur. Moreover, some of the cost of meeting the constraints is passed on to consumers through higher prices and to a portion of rural economies through lower production rates and labor expenditures.

Policy Design and Conservation Compliance on Highly Erodible Lands

We develop a game-theoretic model of heterogeneous producers in order to identify the economic determinants of producer noncompliance with the conservation provisions of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) policy on highly erodible lands. We evaluate the policy effectiveness in inducing compliance and adoption of conservation practices. The current policy design creates economic incentives for all noncompliant producers to masquerade as adopters and to claim government payments for which they are not entitled. Both theoretical and empirical results indicate that the increased income transfers to agriculture enacted under the latest Farm Bill will increase producer compliance and conservation activity on highly erodible lands. (JEL Q21)

An Information-Theoretical Analysis of Budget-Constrained Nonpoint Source Pollution Control

A method for treating the phosphate sludge waste from phosphate conversion baths used in the metal forming and metal working industry is described whereby the phosphate sludge is completely converted into a lubricant additive which can be used in lubricant formulations for the metal forming and metal working industry as well as general purpose lubricants. By operation of this process, waste treatment and waste disposal problems associated with the phosphate sludge are essentially eliminated. Various dry-soap lubricant formulations, warm forming lubricant formulations, non-reactive lubricant formulations, and metal precoat formulations containing the recovered or recycled phosphate sludge additive are described. The lime normally contained in many of these lubricant formulations can be significantly reduced or essentially eliminated by using the recovered phosphate sludge additive of this invention, thereby resulting in improved lubricant formulations. The recovered phosphate sludge is especially useful as an Extreme Pressure Additive.

A Carrot-and-Stick Approach to Environmental Improvement: Marrying Agri-Environmental Payments and Water Quality Regulations

Agri-environmental programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, provide payments to livestock and crop producers to generate broadly defined environmental benefits and to help them comply with federal water quality regulations, such as those that require manure nutrients generated on large animal feeding operations to be spread on cropland at no greater than agronomic rates. We couch these policy options in terms of agri-environmental “carrots” and regulatory “sticks,” respectively. The U.S. agricultural sector is likely to respond to these policies in a variety of ways. Simulation analysis suggests that meeting nutrient standards would result in decreased levels of animal production, increased prices for livestock and poultry products, increased levels of crop production, and water quality improvements. However, estimated impacts are not homogeneous across regions. In regions with relatively less cropland per ton of manure produced, the impacts of these policies are more pronounced.

Assessing the Returns to R&D on Perennial Crops: The Costs and Benefits of Pierce's Disease Research in the California Winegrape Industry

Pierce’s Disease (PD) of grapevines costs more than

The Role of Pest Control Advisers in Preventative Management of Grapevine Trunk Diseases

100 million per year, even with public control programs in place that cost

Preventative Disease Management and Grower Decision Making: A Case Study of California Wine-Grape Growers

50 million per year (Tumber et al., 2012). If the PD Control Program ended, and the GWSS was distributed freely throughout California, the annual cost to the winegrape industry would increase by more than

Managing Manure To Improve Air And Water Quality

185 million (Alston et al., 2012). Using a simulation model of the market for California winegrapes, we estimate the benefits from research, development and adoption of PD-resistant vines as ranging from

Valuing Options in Water Markets: A Laboratory Investigation

4 million to