THE SOCIAL RETURNS OF AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES FOR PROMOTING WATER-QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

Soil erosion leads to various degrees of soil productivity loss and to pollution when contaminants load into watercourses. Practices to cons erve soil do not inevitably profit farmers; in fact, for most farmers they do not. Still, in most instances, they do yield net off-farm gain s. Especially when on-farm net costs are involved, then for policy int ervention purposes it becomes necessary to calculate the social return of such practices. Total off-farm returns depend on the degree of wat er quality improvement made, the number of water uses and use is in a watershed and society's willingness to pay for such improvement. This paper explores a new method for calculating the degree of water qualit y change from a loading reduction and its impact on social return. In a case study application for an Ontario watershed water was used for o nly two purposes: angling and conveyance. Moreover the degree of water quality improvement made from sediment and phosphorus reduction throu gh modified agricultural practices was slight. This was mainly because of the presence of pollutants not necessarily originating from agricu lture that prevented a substantial increase in water. quality. As a co nsequence, in this case, off-farm benefits from such reductions were l ow. On the other hand several agronomic practices resulted in positive on-faint returns.