THE CONSERVATION SECURITY PROGRAM: ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS

ABSTRACT: Farmers receive income from many things they produce in abundance-- food, feed, fiber and fuel. Farmers also may generate environmental benefits (improved water quality and fisheries and wildlife habitat) by managing their operations in certain ways. Unfortunately, farmers have limited ability to quantify the environmental benefits associated with land use practices. Furthermore, farmers may have to forego government commodity payments, thereby reducing their income from working lands, to produce positive externalities. Provisions under the Conservation Security Program (CSP), if fully implemented, may allow producers to receive some compensation for conservation practices that provide some positive environmental externalities to a watershed. This research used a computer simulation model to examine the relationship between government commodity and conservation programs, agricultural practices, water quality (nutrient and sediment loss), fish communities and net farm income within two small watersheds-- a coolwater stream and a warmwater stream. We used the Agricultural Drainage and Pesticide Transport (ADAPT) model in relation to land use to calculate in-stream suspended sediment concentrations using estimates of sediment delivery, runoff, baseflow and stream bank erosion, and quantified the effects of suspended sediment exposure on fish communities. When the agriculture practices that potentially qualify under the CSP were implemented watershed-wide, net far