Climate-smart agricultural and forestry (CSAF) practices prevent greenhouse gas emissions from occurring or increase carbon sequestration. I examine how the development of U.S. CSAF incentives shifted from offset markets to biofuel regulations over time. My perspective is informed by two professional roles I had in developing these standards. First, as an economist at the Chicago Climate Exchange, I developed CSAF offset protocols between 2007 and 2010. Second, between 2022 and 2024, I was an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) when USDA developed a climate-smart agriculture pilot protocol for the sustainable aviation fuel blender’s tax credit. Twenty years ago, there were no U.S. biofuel mandates and CSAF incentives were conceptualized as occurring through offset markets. I explain how, in contrast to cap-and-trade programs, greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural and forestry practices are already included in the baseline of biofuel regulations. This implies that additionality issues, which have impeded the development of CSAF offset standards, are not as applicable to biofuel programs. Specifically, I examine the development of agricultural soil carbon, livestock digester, and forest carbon protocols as case studies. I conclude by discussing how CSAF crediting may evolve in the future.

We use a combination of primary and secondary data to investigate and quantify the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the California specialty crop sector. We demonstrate that the specialty crop sector was highly resilient during the pandemic and aftermath in terms of output. For many crops, production fell somewhat between 2019 and 2021, but not to an extent that is outside of normal annual variation for fruits and vegetables. However, prices increased dramatically for many commodities. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most input costs did not surge during the pandemic, and some fell. But both the primary and secondary data identify labor and truck transportation as the major issues facing producers and driving up prices. Trade associations played a vital role in disseminating solutions to growers throughout the pandemic.

Pests and diseases like citrus greening that threaten agricultural productivity also pose a risk to consumers. Reductions in food supply due to outbreaks and spread could increase food prices. We model U.S. household fruit demand using a Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System and data from Circana’s 2020 and 2021 household panel. Price and income elasticity estimates reveal how household behavior might adjust with shocks to citrus and other fruit prices. Shocks to retail fruit prices can be from either citrus greening or other phenomena such as adverse weather. We also use compensating variation to estimate the impact that changes in fruit prices could have on consumer welfare.

The beef industry is facing increasing pressure to adopt sustainable practices, driven by environmental, economic, and social concerns. Designing effective policies that satisfy industry demands while aligning with public interests is a complex challenge. Using a nationally representative survey of 3,001 U.S. residents, we employ a best–worst scaling approach to assess preferences for nine beef sustainability policies. Results reveal consumers prioritize affordability of beef products and welfare of cattle as most important sustainability policies. Conversely, policies addressing greenhouse gas emissions from cattle production are least important, with less than 6% of respondents preferring them.

Competition and power imbalances in the food chain are under increased scrutiny from policy makers. We assess the competitive conditions in the EU food sector, using firm-level accounting data to examine firm size distributions and market concentration (for 10 countries), and production-function-derived markups (for 7 countries) for food manufacturing, retail, and wholesale industries. Key findings include the following: (i) most firms are small, but larger firms generate most turnover; (ii) concentration is notable in certain subsectors (25% of retail/wholesale and 50% manufacturing subsectors); (iii) the correlation between turnover size, markups, and concentration at subsector level is weak. We discuss the implications for the use of turnover-based classification in the EU policy initiative on unfair trading practices.

This paper hypothesizes that respondents in contingent valuation surveys may form different benefit and cost levels that deviate from the levels specified by the researcher. The conceptual framework investigates potential biases based on the direction of deviations. Survey data on the restoration of wetlands in Tampa Bay show that a significant portion of the respondents deviate from the benefit and cost levels presented in the scenario. Empirical results indicate that willingness-to-pay (WTP) estimates are very sensitive to the perceived benefit and cost levels. Depending on the direction of the deviations, WTP estimates could fluctuate up to +61 percent and −82 percent, compared to the estimate from those who evaluate the scenario at the presented levels.

Water recreation is valuable to people, and its value can be affected by changes in water quality. This paper presents the results of a revealed preference survey to elicit coastal New England, USA, residents’ values for water recreation and water quality. We combined the survey responses with a comprehensive data set of coastal attributes, including in-water and remotely sensed water quality metrics. Using a travel cost model framework, we found water clarity and the bacterial conditions of coastal waters to be practical water quality inputs to economic analysis, available at appropriate scales, and meaningful to people and their behavior. Changes in clarity and bacterial conditions affected trip values, with a $4.5 change for a meter in clarity in Secchi depth and $0.08 for a one-unit bacteria change in colony-forming units per 100 ml. We demonstrate the large potential value of improving water quality through welfare analysis scenarios for Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. The paper discusses lessons for improving the policy relevance and applicability of water quality valuation studies through improved water quality data collection, combined with the application of scalable analysis tools for valuation.

Waterborne Escherichia coli (E. coli) represents a pervasive water quality problem across the United States. In Michigan, the presence of E. coli has become problematic for many areas where agricultural run-off and ineffective policies have made these outbreaks endemic. Combining the universe of housing transaction datasets from 2009 to 2017 with the State of Michigan water sampling dataset, we investigate and quantify the negative impacts of E. coli outbreaks on local housing prices. Our difference-in-differences model estimates an overall impact of −8.94% for houses in the treatment group relative to the control group. However, this effect is only short term, as sales prices recover after the outbreak has ended.

We estimate the economic value of birding, which is an important ecosystem service produced by bird populations in recreation areas. Our research identifies the link between values and species richness as well as the abundance of the sandhill crane (Grus canadensis), which migrates each year through our study area. Sandhill crane stopovers at state and federal wildlife areas can attract many birders. We estimate this nonmarket value using the zonal travel cost method and data from the eBird project on wildlife areas in Indiana. We compare crane counts based on eBird with those from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). We find important differences depending on whether we use eBird or DNR counts. On average, birders are willing to pay $28 per trip to sites in the study area and less than $1 per trip to see an additional species, while the value of 1000 more cranes is either about $1 or $10 per trip depending on how abundance is measured.