Energy, Economics, Climate Change and Soil Security.

This paper will address a mix of issues involved with soils and agricultural economics as influenced by energy and related climate change.

There are a number of ways that soils and energy, energy related climate change are linked.  In particular there are energy actions and related climate change concerns that influence both the desirability of soil characteristics and their abundance where by characteristics I mean the totality of physical, chemical, biological and ecological attributes of soil.  This involves characteristics that likely of primary concern to the conference attendees involving carbon balance, organic matter, nitrous oxide emissions, erosion, water retention, nutrient holding and many other things that could be mentioned.  I will discuss a number of implications of energy for soil with a bit of an environmental/energy economics bent with apologies to those in the audience that know much more about the soil science aspects of the issue.   

Now as an economist there are a number of aspects of the items discussed above that I have addressed developing information on costs, benefits, social losses, broader economic and environmental implications.  I will tell a few war stories from the trenches of approaches and findings.

At the end of the day I find

• Energy does have consequences for soils and soil health some positive some negative
• Strategies for management that are better for soil health are not always economicand may not be adopted unless public action is taken
• There are forces that will challenge our ability to produce food, fuel and mitigation.  Technology must continue strongly advancing in the face of climate change and demand growth.
• Marginal benefits of retaining soils in terms of productivity gains are likely not be large on deep soils but rather would be higher on marginal lands.  More valuation work in those setting might be done.
• Offsite costs of soil losses can be big.