On the use value of land in agricultural production

The evaluation of agricultural land is an area that has received little att ention within natural resource economics compared to the evaluation of othe r ecosystems such as forests or wetlands. A recent attempt by Alexander et al, (1998) (Alexander, A.M., List, J.A.. Margolis, M., d;Arge, R.C., 1998. A method for valuing global ecosystem services. Ecological Economics 27, 16 1-170) considers one of the functions performed by agricultural land, i.e. agricultural production, and it is based on the mathematical difference bet ween monetary value of output and production expenses. This approach is dis cussed in relation to the different treatment provided by the market to agr icultural and industrial products, to the correctness of the arithmetical p rocedure, and to the issue of upscaling data from lower to upper levels of the ecosystem hierarchy. Such an approach needs much refinement before the results provided are meaningful. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.