How Much Should Swiss Farmers Contribute to Greenhouse Gas Reduction? A Meta-Analytical Approach

The debate about future climate policy involves the question about the contribution of agriculture in meeting overall greenhouse gas mitigation targets. From an economic perspective, this calls for assessing and equalizing marginal mitigation costs across different sectors. To this end, we employ a meta-analytical approach that is based on results from different studies, and that allows us to assess the optimal level and economic value of agriculture’s contribution to meeting national policy targets. A numerical example for Switzerland shows that, even without any legal commitment to greenhouse gas emissions reduction, Swiss agriculture will contribute 17 to 28 % to the national Kyoto target until 2010. This reduction corresponds to an economic value in the range of 30 to 106 Mio CHF/year and diminishes the expected total abatement costs in the rest of the economy in the same magnitude. This is primarily an effect of the current agricultural policy, whereas targeted incentives and soil carbon sequestration may only marginally contribute within the same time frame. Moreover, the results of our meta-analytical assessment underline that it would be efficient to participate in international emissions trading. From a methodological point of view, our analysis explicates how the results about greenhouse gas mitigation costs from a highly detailed allocation model of the agricultural sector and those from an energy model of the overall economy can be connected in a meta-analytical framework.