The USDA spends more than $5 billion annually on conservation programs to enhance environmental quality, ecosystem services and agricultural sustainability. Yet credible information on economic (and particularly non-market) benefits is often lacking, particularly for heterogeneous conservation practices that occur over large spatial scales. Current economic valuation methods are challenged by the individualized and spatially heterogeneous…

The USDA spends more than $5 billion per year on conservation to enhance environmental quality, ecosystem services and agricultural sustainability. The biophysical impacts of these programs (e.g., on soil retention and water quality) are relatively well understood and can be estimated using standard modeling approaches. Yet the economic benefits of these programs remain unknown, and…