IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ias/cpaper/apr-winter-2015-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Nitrogen Management under Uncertainty: An Investigation of Farmers' Decision Processes

Author

Listed:
  • Keri L. Jacobs
  • Quinn Weninger

Abstract

Des Moines Water Works has recently threatened a lawsuit against three upstream Iowa counties they claim are responsible for excessive nitrate loading in the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. Excess nitrate loads, which must be reduced before water is safe to drink, is reported to have cost Des Moines taxpayers upwards of $1 million in 2013. The cost of nitrate removal, which could include investment in new treatment capacity, will continue, and may grow, unless steps are taken to reduce nitrate runoff from agriculture. While such water treatment is costly, yield losses may be more costly if rates are capped by regulations. The problem is complicated because of uncertainty over weather and soil conditions producers face when making their nitrogen use decisions. Furthermore, weather largely dictates how much of the applied nitrogen leaves the fields.

Suggested Citation

  • Keri L. Jacobs & Quinn Weninger, 2015. "Nitrogen Management under Uncertainty: An Investigation of Farmers' Decision Processes," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications apr-winter-2015-3, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:ias:cpaper:apr-winter-2015-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.card.iastate.edu/ag_policy_review/article/?a=31
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.card.iastate.edu/ag_policy_review/pdf/winter-2015.pdf
    File Function: Full Issue Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:ias:cpaper:apr-winter-2015-3. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caiasus.html .

    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.