Cost-effectiveness of environment-friendly practices: coupled modelling to represent the consequences on a territory of the adoption of practices aimed at limiting nitrogen pollution

Abstract

This paper deals with the tools that enable understanding jointly the cost and the effectiveness of best management practices when they are voluntarily adopted by farmers. In such a situation, the diversity of farms, the spatial variety of their practices and the heterogeneity of the watersheds makes it necessary to design a pluridisciplinary approach to highlight a clear ex-ante analysis of the global effect on a territory of heterogeneous individual decisions. We present here such an approach, with an integrated model of a small watershed in Brittany.