Changing agricultural land use: evaluating the benefits and trade-offs

Abstract

Changing the mix of land uses in agricultural systems affects the benefits enjoyed by humans. Such benefits range from food and water to aesthetic and spiritual benefits. If one aim of land-use decision-making is to maintain or improve the quality of human lives, the consequences of proposed changes must be evaluated across all benefits that contribute to human well-being. This is a challenging task. Difficulties include classifying benefits to minimise double-counting, objective quantification of disparate benefits, and the costs of analyses. The reported work addresses these issues by testing a new classification of benefits and using expert elicitation to reduce assessment costs. Compared to current agricultural systems, the impacts of the two perennial plant technologies assessed were generally either neutral or positive with respect to the flow of benefits. At low cost, the benefits analysis informs stakeholders of the impacts of proposed land-use changes and the breadth of issues that need to be considered by decision-makers.

Keywords:

• benefit–cost analysis
• decisions
• conservation
• land-use change, values

Acknowledgements

The assistance of the following in one or more of contributing to the assessments as experts, advising on how to implement the work, or commenting on the paper and early reports is gratefully acknowledged: Amir Abadi, Neil Ballard, David Barry, John Bartle, David Bicknell, Audrey Bird, Lindsay Bourke, Brendan Christy, Allan Curtis, Ian Davidson, Mike Ewing, Sandra Greenaway, Judy Griffiths, Georgina Gubbins, Peter Hayes, Reg Hill, Daniel Laffan, Graham Lean, Claire Lewis, Malcolm McCaskill, Richard Murphy, Belinda O’Brien, David Pannell, Don Price, Maggie Raeside, David Robertson, Kate Sargeant, Debbie Shea, Michael Smith, Tony Ransom, Andrew Speirs and Graeme Ward. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments have improved the paper. The work of the authors was funded by the Department of Parks and Wildlife (WA), Department of Environment and Primary Industries (Victoria) and the Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre.