IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agisys/v121y2013icp23-32.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cover crops effect on farm benefits and nitrate leaching: Linking economic and environmental analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel, José Luis
  • Garrido, Alberto
  • Quemada, Miguel

Abstract

Introducing cover crops (CC) interspersed with intensively fertilized crops in rotation has the potential to reduce nitrate leaching. This paper evaluates various strategies involving CC between maize and compares the economic and environmental results with respect to a typical maize–fallow rotation. The comparison is performed through stochastic (Monte-Carlo) simulation models of farms’ profits using probability distribution functions (pdfs) of yield and N fertilizer saving fitted with data collected from various field trials and pdfs of crop prices and the cost of fertilizer fitted from statistical sources. Stochastic dominance relationships are obtained to rank the most profitable strategies from a farm financial perspective. A two-criterion comparison scheme is proposed to rank alternative strategies based on farm profit and nitrate leaching levels, taking the baseline scenario as the maize–fallow rotation. The results show that when CC biomass is sold as forage instead of keeping it in the soil, greater profit and less leaching of nitrates are achieved than in the baseline scenario. While the fertilizer saving will be lower if CC is sold than if it is kept in the soil, the revenue obtained from the sale of the CC compensates for the reduced fertilizer savings. The results show that CC would perhaps provide a double dividend of greater profit and reduced nitrate leaching in intensive irrigated cropping systems in Mediterranean regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel, José Luis & Garrido, Alberto & Quemada, Miguel, 2013. "Cover crops effect on farm benefits and nitrate leaching: Linking economic and environmental analysis," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 23-32.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:agisys:v:121:y:2013:i:c:p:23-32
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agsy.2013.06.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X13000747
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agsy.2013.06.004?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. Ribas, Giovana Ghisleni & Zanon, Alencar Junior & Streck, Nereu Augusto & Pilecco, Isabela Bulegon & de Souza, Pablo Mazzuco & Heinemann, Alexandre Bryan & Grassini, Patricio, 2021. "Assessing yield and economic impact of introducing soybean to the lowland rice system in southern Brazil," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    2. Pratt, Michelle R. & Tyner, Wallace E. & Muth, David J. & Kladivko, Eileen J., 2014. "Synergies between cover crops and corn stover removal," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 67-76.
    3. Calder McCollum & Jason S. Bergtold & Jeffery Williams & Amer Al-Sudani & Elizabeth Canales, 2022. "Perceived Benefit and Cost Perception Gaps between Adopters and Non-Adopters of In-Field Conservation Practices of Agricultural Producers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(19), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Lucas Clay & Katharine Perkins & Marzieh Motallebi & Alejandro Plastina & Bhupinder Singh Farmaha, 2020. "The Perceived Benefits, Challenges, and Environmental Effects of Cover Crop Implementation in South Carolina," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-14, August.
    5. Erin M. Silva & Virginia M. Moore, 2017. "Cover Crops as an Agroecological Practice on Organic Vegetable Farms in Wisconsin, USA," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-15, January.
    6. J. Carl Ureta & Lucas Clay & Marzieh Motallebi & Joan Ureta, 2020. "Quantifying the Landscape’s Ecological Benefits—An Analysis of the Effect of Land Cover Change on Ecosystem Services," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Plaza-Bonilla, Daniel & Nogué-Serra, Irene & Raffaillac, Didier & Cantero-Martínez, Carlos & Justes, Éric, 2018. "Carbon footprint of cropping systems with grain legumes and cover crops: A case-study in SW France," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 92-102.

    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:eee:agisys:v:121:y:2013:i:c:p:23-32. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy .

    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.