Appraising agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation potentials: effects of alternative assumptions

By Uwe A. Schneider, Bruce A. McCarl. 2006

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There is interest in society in general and in the agricultural and forestry sectors concerning a land-based role in greenhouse gas mitigation reduction. Numerous studies have estimated the potential supply schedules at which agriculture and forestry could produce greenhouse gas offsets. However, such studies vary widely in critical assumptions regarding economic market adjustments, allowed scope of mitigation alternatives, and region of focus. Here, we examine the effects of using different assumptions on the total emission mitigation supply curve from agriculture and forestry in the United States. To do this we employ the U.S.-based Agricultural Sector and Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Model and find that variations in such factors can have profound effects on the results. Differences between commonly employed methods shift economic mitigation potentials from -55 to p 85%. The bias is stronger at higher carbon prices due to afforestation and energy crop plantations that reduce supply of traditional commodities. Lower carbon prices promote management changes with smaller impacts on commodity supply. Copyright 2006 International Association of Agricultural Economists.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a64adcfad21050c2ad4d83d7b63925b5e34e75a6

Citations in the corpus

• The Indirect Land Use Impacts of United States Biofuel Policies: The Importance of Acreage, Yield, and Bilateral Trade Responses (2009, unknown): “Underlying each of these projections are some highly sensitive and uncertain assumptions regarding economic and technological adjustment (Schneider and McCarl, 2006).”