Economic evaluation at the scale of small catchment areas of the introduction of less polluting practices on farms. Example of nitrogen pollution

Abstract

The work described here quantifies the cost of introducing less-polluting methods into the farms situated in two small catchment areas, one dedicated to livestock and the other to crop farming. The method enables both the items that cause pollution emissions and the principal obstacles to their reduction to be identified for each farm production system. Taking such items into account in the solutions adopted, which is necessary because two farms within the same production system can generate widely differing levels of pollution, enables an extrapolation to several well-known farms in each small basin.