Valuing Ecosystem Services to Agricultural Production to Inform Policy Design: An Introduction

There is an ongoing policy debate regarding both how much government intervention there should be to protect ecosystems affected by agriculture, and how the costs of these interventions should be distributed across different interest groups. In accordance with the policy focus in most countries, the majority of the valuation literature on ecosystem services and agriculture estimates the benefits that managed agricultural landscapes can provide to the rest of society. We argue, however, that the efficiency and equity of policies for ecosystem services related to agriculture can be further enhanced by understanding the value and sources of ecosystem services that agricultural production receives. With this in mind, we survey studies and techniques for estimating the value of ecosystem services to agricultural production.