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Socio-Economic Component: Technology
Adoption and Policy
Socio-economic analysis is an integral part of
this project, but this type of analysis cuts across all the components
rather than being it's own component. Adoption of any changes in
agricultural practice requires changes in policy, market circumstances
and farm behavior. Identification of new systems and practices has
limited value if no one adopts them. Socio-economic analysis will
help identify practices and policy instruments that are economically
justified, socially acceptable and financially feasible.
- Enterprise decision-making and feasibility studies. Three
types of firm level economic studies will support the project.
Financial feasibility is a key requirement for real world implemenation.
Promising techniques and suites of techniques will be evaluated
for profitability and financial feasibility. Broader studies
(using surveys, focus groups, and choice experiments) will analyze
the wider socio-economic factors that affect adoption including:
capital requirements, knowledge requirements, stewardship values,
and risk. The economics team will also assist in marketing studies,
for instance, for the solid by-products of the digester.
- Environmental-economic impacts. Economists will cooperate
with engineering personnel to evaluate the total cost, life-cycle
impact of new practices. These studies will determine whether
or not a mitigation of global climate change at the farm level
is offset or enhance by the "ripple" effects of the
practice in associated industries.
- Policy level decision-making. Adoption of potential global
climate change mitigation practices can be facilitated or inhibited
by policy decisions. For example, the Conservation Reserve Program
had enhanced carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and wildlife
habitat on farms. Economists will analyze the potential social
pay-off (benefit cost analysis) of promising technologies to
help inform appropriate levels of public support. Economists
will also cooperate with participant-advisors and other researchers
to analyze the potential effectiveness of candidate policy instruments.
For more information on the socio-economic component
of the project, contact Phil
Wandschneider, WSU School of Economic Sciences.
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Updated
May 10, 2005
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The Climate Friendly Farming
Research & Demonstration Project is a project of Washington
State University's Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural
Resources which seeks to understand the interconnections between
climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and agriculture in an effort
to reduce agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases, improve soil
carbon sequestration of carbon dioxide, and develop bioenergy, biofuels
and bioproducts from agriculture that offset the combustion of fossil
fuel carbon.
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