IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anr/reseco/v15y2023p105-130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Economics of Nutrient Pollution from Agriculture

Author

Listed:
  • Gemma Del Rossi

    (Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA)

  • Mohammad Mainul Hoque

    (Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA)

  • Yongjie Ji

    (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA)

  • Catherine L. Kling

    (Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA)

Abstract

Nutrient pollution from agricultural sources, coming primarily from fertilization of row crops and manure from livestock operations, affects ecological health in the United States through water and air pollution. We summarize data trends on commercial fertilizer use, manure, cropland, and concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways. We present data indicating that fertilizer applications per acre of US cropland exhibit an upward trend, with a strong spatial correlation between agricultural intensification and nutrient contents in waterbodies. While biophysical science has advanced our understanding of how nutrient pollutants affect the functioning of physical ecosystems, economic research has quantified only some of the economic damages related to losses in ecosystem services due to nutrient pollution. Our summary of this work indicates that quantification is incomplete and does not yet provide full characterization of these damages across the country. We summarize key available damage estimates and the limited evidence on cost-effective policy design. We conclude by identifying important yet understudied areas, including a focus on contaminated drinking water sources, health damages from nutrient pollution, and the need for holistic estimates of the costs of the externalities from pollution, where new research efforts will greatly benefit society.

Suggested Citation

  • Gemma Del Rossi & Mohammad Mainul Hoque & Yongjie Ji & Catherine L. Kling, 2023. "The Economics of Nutrient Pollution from Agriculture," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 15(1), pages 105-130, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:anr:reseco:v:15:y:2023:p:105-130
    DOI: 10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-021317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-021317
    Download Restriction: Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1146/annurev-resource-111820-021317?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. He, Fei & Lee, Dogil & Borisova, Tatiana & Graham, Wendy & Athearn, Kevin & Dukes, Michael & Merrick, Jason & Hochmuth, Robert, 2024. "Farm-scale economic and environmental tradeoffs of land use and land management decisions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    agriculture; fertilizer overapplication; nonpoint-source; environmental externalities;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q15 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Land Ownership and Tenure; Land Reform; Land Use; Irrigation; Agriculture and Environment
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q57 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Ecological Economics

    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:anr:reseco:v:15:y:2023:p:105-130. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: http://www.annualreviews.org (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.annualreviews.org .

    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.