Economic Measures of Soil Conservation Benefits: Regional Values
for Policy Assessment by LeRoy Hansen and Marc Ribaudo Technical
Bulletin No. (TB-1922) 31 pp, September 2008 This report
describes data and methodologies that the Economic Research
Service has used to apply monetary values to changes in soil
erosion. Values and methodology are clearly described so that
analysts can apply the data to specific soil conservation
projects. ERS has used the values to estimate soil conservation
benefits of changes in farm programs and practices, but no
analyses of farm programs or practices are provided here. The
benefit values are regional dollar-per-ton measures of 14
different categories of soil conservation benefits. There are
other soil conservation benefits categories beyond those
reported here, so a full accounting of benefits is not possible.
As a result, monetary values derived from applications of these
data are likely to be lower-bound estimates of the benefits or
costs of changes in soil erosion. The data