IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ubcwps/15843.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Optimal Length Of An Agricultural Carbon Contract

Author

Listed:
  • Gulati, Sumeet
  • Vercammen, James

Abstract

In this paper we present the economic determinants of the optimal length of a carbon offset contract. We find that because of a declining capacity of the soil to sequester carbon, the optimal length of the carbon contract is finite (the marginal benefit of remaining in the contract is declining over time, whereas marginal opportunity cost is rising). We also explore the effect of varying key parameter values on the optimal length in the contract. If the contract requires the farmer to sequester at a higher rate, the farmer chooses the contract for a shorter length of time, and this may decrease rather than increase social welfare. If society places a higher value on carbon accumulation, the contract is chosen for a longer length of time. Finally, if both the farmer and society have a higher discount rate, the model provides a somewhat surprising result. The overall time in the contract, and benefits from carbon accumulation are higher when the common discount rate is higher.

Suggested Citation

  • Gulati, Sumeet & Vercammen, James, 2005. "The Optimal Length Of An Agricultural Carbon Contract," Working Papers 15843, University of British Columbia, Food and Resource Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:ubcwps:15843
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.15843
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/15843/files/wp05002a.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.15843?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth M. Chomitz & Franck Lecocq, 2004. "Temporary sequestration credits: an instrument for carbon bears," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 65-74, March.
    2. GR Pautsch & LA Kurkalova & BA Babcock & CL Kling, 2001. "The Efficiency Of Sequestering Carbon In Agricultural Soils," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 19(2), pages 123-134, April.
    3. Paul J. Ferraro & R. David Simpson, 2002. "The Cost-Effectiveness of Conservation Payments," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 78(3), pages 339-353.
    4. Heng‐Chi Lee & Bruce A. McCarl & Dhazn Gillig, 2005. "The Dynamic Competitiveness of U.S. Agricultural and Forest Carbon Sequestration," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 53(4), pages 343-357, December.
    5. Lecocq, Franck & Chomitz, Kenneth, 2001. "Optimal use of carbon sequestration in a global climate change strategy : is there a wooden bridge to a clean energy future ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2635, The World Bank.
    6. Paul J. Thomassin, 2003. "Canadian Agriculture and the Development of a Carbon Trading and Offset System," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1171-1177.
    7. G. Cornelis van Kooten & Clark S. Binkley & Gregg Delcourt, 1995. "Effect of Carbon Taxes and Subsidies on Optimal Forest Rotation Age and Supply of Carbon Services," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(2), pages 365-374.
    8. Antle, John & Capalbo, Susan & Mooney, Sian & Elliott, Edward & Paustian, Keith, 2003. "Spatial heterogeneity, contract design, and the efficiency of carbon sequestration policies for agriculture," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 231-250, September.
    9. Antle, John M. & Capalbo, Susan Marie & Mooney, Sian & Elliott, Edward T. & Paustian, Keith H., 2001. "Economic Analysis Of Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration: An Integrated Assessment Approach," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 26(2), pages 1-24, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chen, Xiaoxuan & Ando, Amy Whritenour, 2006. "Optimal Contract Length for Voluntary Land Conservation Programs," 2006 Annual meeting, July 23-26, Long Beach, CA 21259, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    2. James Vercammen, 2019. "A dynamic analysis of cost‐share agri‐environmental programs," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 67(1), pages 15-30, March.
    3. Sharma, Bijay P. & Khanna, Madhu & Miao, Ruiqing, 2022. "Designing Efficient Payments to Incentivize GHG Mitigation Using Energy Crops," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322361, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    4. Gren, Ing-Marie & Zeleke, Abenezer Aklilu, 2016. "Policy design for forest carbon sequestration: A review of the literature," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 128-136.
    5. Juutinen, Artti & Ollikainen, Markku & Mönkkönen, Mikko & Reunanen, Pasi & Tikkanen, Olli-Pekka & Kouki, Jari, 2014. "Optimal contract length for biodiversity conservation under conservation budget constraint," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 14-24.
    6. James F. Oehmke, 2017. "Re‐Examining the Reported Rates of Return to Food and Agricultural Research and Development: Comment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 99(3), pages 818-826, April.
    7. Timothy Capon & Michael Harris & Andrew Reeson, 2013. "The Design of Markets for Soil Carbon Sequestration," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 161-173, June.
    8. Lennox, Gareth D. & Armsworth, Paul R., 2011. "Suitability of short or long conservation contracts under ecological and socio-economic uncertainty," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(15), pages 2856-2866.
    9. Juutinen, Artti & Reunanen, Pasi & Mönkkönen, Mikko & Tikkanen, Olli-Pekka & Kouki, Jari, 2012. "Conservation of forest biodiversity using temporal conservation contracts," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 121-129.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gulati, Sumeet & Vercammen, James, 2005. "The Optimal Length of an Agricultural Carbon Contract," Working Papers 37027, University of Victoria, Resource Economics and Policy.
    2. Hediger, Werner, 2009. "The non-permanence of optimal soil carbon sequestration," 83rd Annual Conference, March 30 - April 1, 2009, Dublin, Ireland 51057, Agricultural Economics Society.
    3. Uwe A. Schneider & Michael Obersteiner & Erwin Schmid & Bruce A. McCarl, 2007. "Agricultural adaptation to climate policies under technical change," Working Papers FNU-133, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Jan 2008.
    4. Feng, Hongli & Kurkalova, Lyubov A. & Kling, Catherine L. & Gassman, Philip W., 2006. "Environmental conservation in agriculture: Land retirement vs. changing practices on working land," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 600-614, September.
    5. John Antle & Stephen Ogle, 2012. "Influence of soil C, N 2 O and fuel use on GHG mitigation with no-till adoption," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 111(3), pages 609-625, April.
    6. Mooney, Sian & Antle, John M. & Capalbo, Susan Marie & Paustian, Keith H., 2002. "Contracting For Soil Carbon Credits: Design And Costs Of Measurement And Monitoring," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19616, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    7. Edwin Van Der Werf & Sonja Peterson, 2009. "Modeling linkages between climate policy and land use: an overview," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(5), pages 507-517, September.
    8. Gulati, Sumeet & Vercammen, James, 2006. "Time inconsistent resource conservation contracts," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 454-468, July.
    9. Michael Hartmann & Werner Hediger & Simon Peter, 2008. "How Much Should Swiss Farmers Contribute to Greenhouse Gas Reduction? A Meta-Analytical Approach," Journal of Socio-Economics in Agriculture (Until 2015: Yearbook of Socioeconomics in Agriculture), Swiss Society for Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, vol. 1(1), pages 183-218.
    10. Tas Thamo & David J. Pannell & Marit E. Kragt & Michael J. Robertson & Maksym Polyakov, 2017. "Dynamics and the economics of carbon sequestration: common oversights and their implications," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 22(7), pages 1095-1111, October.
    11. Rong Li & Brent Sohngen & Xiaohui Tian, 2022. "Efficiency of forest carbon policies at intensive and extensive margins," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 104(4), pages 1243-1267, August.
    12. Manning, Dale & Rad, Mani Rouhi & Ogle, Stephen, 2022. "Inferring the Supply of GHG Abatement from Agricultural Lands," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322539, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    13. John M. Antle & Roberto O. Valdivia, 2006. "Modelling the supply of ecosystem services from agriculture: a minimum‐data approach," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 50(1), pages 1-15, March.
    14. Antle, John M. & Diagana, Bocar & Stoorvogel, Jetse J. & Valdivia, Roberto O., 2010. "Minimum-data analysis of ecosystem service supply in semi-subsistence agricultural systems," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-17.
    15. Szulczyk, Kenneth R. & McCarl, Bruce A., 2010. "Market penetration of biodiesel," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(8), pages 2426-2433, October.
    16. Povellato, Andrea & Bosello, Francesco & Giupponi, Carlo, 2007. "A Review of Recent Studies on Cost Effectiveness of GHG Mitigation Measures in the European Agro-Forestry Sector," Natural Resources Management Working Papers 10268, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    17. de Cara, Stephane & Rozakis, Stelios, 2004. "Carbon sequestration through the planting of multi-annual energy crops: A dynamic and spatial assessment," Agricultural Economics Review, Greek Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 5(1), pages 1-17, January.
    18. Szulczyk, Kenneth R. & McCarl, Bruce A. & Cornforth, Gerald, 2010. "Market penetration of ethanol," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 394-403, January.
    19. Timothy Capon & Michael Harris & Andrew Reeson, 2013. "The Design of Markets for Soil Carbon Sequestration," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 32(2), pages 161-173, June.
    20. Hari Dulal & Gernot Brodnig & Kalim Shah, 2011. "Capital assets and institutional constraints to implementation of greenhouse gas mitigation options in agriculture," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-23, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Environmental Economics and Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • Q20 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - General
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:ubcwps:15843. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/daubcca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.