Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-09T04:59:33.727Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Applying Optimization and the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Enhance Agricultural Preservation Strategies in the State of Delaware

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Kent D. Messer  and
William L. Allen III
Kent D. Messer
Affiliation:
Department of Food and Resource Economics and the Department of Economics at the University of Delaware in Newark, Delaware
William L. Allen III
Affiliation:
The Conservation Fund in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Get access

Abstract

Using agricultural preservation priorities derived from an analytical hierarchy process by 23 conservation experts from 18 agencies in the state of Delaware, this research uses weighted benefit measures to evaluate the historical success of Delaware's agricultural protection fund, which spent nearly $100 million in its first decade. This research demonstrates how these operation research techniques can be used in concert to address relevant conservation questions. Results suggest that the state's sealed-bid-offer auction, which determines the yearly conservation selections, is superior to benefit-targeting approaches frequently employed by conservation organizations, but is inferior to the optimization technique of binary linear programming that could have provided additional benefits to the state, such as 12,000 additional acres worth an estimated $25 million.

Keywords

conservation optimizationfarmland protectionanalytic hierarchy processbinary linear programming
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , October 2010 , pp. 442 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, W.L., Amundsen, O., Messer, K.D., Phillips, B.T., and Weber, T. 2006. “Kent County Rapid Assessment of Green Infrastructure.” The Conservation Fund, Arlington, VA. Google Scholar
American Farmland Trust (AFT). 1997. “Farming on the Edge.” AFT, Washington, D.C. Google Scholar
Ando, A., Camm, J., Polasky, S., and Solow, A. 1998. “Species Distributions, Land Values, and Efficient Conservation.” Science 279(5359): 2126–2128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Azzaino, Z., Conrad, J.M., and Ferraro, P.J. 2002. “Optimizing the Riparian Buffer: Harold Brook in the Skaneateles Lake Watershed, New York.” Land Economics 78(4): 501–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babcock, B.A., Lakshminarayan, P.G., Wu, J., and Zilberman, D. 1997. “Targeting Tools for the Purchase of Environmental Amenities.” Land Economics 73(3): 325–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balmford, A., Moore, J.L., Brooks, T., Burgess, N., Hansen, L.A., Williams, P., and Rahbek, C. 2001. “Conservation Conflicts across Africa.” Science 291(5513): 2616–2619.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benedict, M., and McMahon, E. 2006. Green Infrastructure: Linking Landscapes and Communities. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, J.C., Dillman, B.L., and Stoll, J.R. 1985. “Public Environmental Amenity Benefits of Private Land: The Case of Prime Agricultural Land.” Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics 17(1): 139–149.Google Scholar
Bergstrom, J.C., and Ready, R.C. 2009. “What Have We Learned from Over 20 Years of Farmland Amenity Valuation Research in North America?” Review of Agricultural Economics 31(1): 21–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cabeza, M., and Moilanen, A. 2001. “Design of Reserve Networks and the Persistence of Biodiversity.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 16(5): 242–248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cattaneo, A., Hellerstein, D., Nickerson, C., and Myers, C. 2006. “Balancing the Multiple Objectives of Conservation Programs.” In Economics Research Report No. 19, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, J.M. 2004. “Participation in Agricultural Land Preservation Programs: Parcel Quality and a Complex Policy Environment.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 33(1): 34–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, J.M., and Aull-Hyde, R. 2002. “Identifying Public Preferences for Land Preservation Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process.” Ecological Economics 42(1/2): 131–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, J.M., and Ilvento, T.W. 2004. “A Conjoint Analysis of Public Preferences for Agricultural Land Preservation.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 33(2): 209–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duke, J.M., and Johnston, R.J. 2010. “Multifunctionality and Land Use Policy: An Application of Nonmarket Valuation to Urban Fringe Farm and Forest Preservation.” In Goetz, S. and Brouwer, F., eds., New Perspectives on Agri-Environmental Policies: A Multidisciplinary and Transatlantic Approach. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Duke, J.M., and Lynch, L. 2007. “Gauging Support for Innovative Farmland Preservation Techniques.” Policy Sciences 40(2): 123–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraro, P.J. 2003a. “Conservation Contracting in Heterogeneous Landscapes: An Application to Watershed Protection with Threshold Constraints.” Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 32(1): 53–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraro, P.J. 2003b. “Assigning Priority to Environmental Policy Interventions in a Heterogeneous World.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 22(1): 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halstead, J. 1984. “Measuring the Non-Market Value of Massachusetts Agricultural Land: A Case Study.” Journal of the Northeastern Agricultural Economics Council 13(1): 12–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hof, J., and Bevers, M. 2000. “Direct Spatial Optimization in Natural Resource Management: Four Linear Programming Examples.” Annals of Operations Research 95(1/4): 67–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, R.J., and Duke, J.M. 2009. “Willingness to Pay for Land Preservation across States and Jurisdictional Scale: Implications for Benefit Transfer.” Land Economics 85(2): 217–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kline, J., and Wilchens, D. 1996. “Public Preferences Regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs.” Land Economics 72(4): 538–549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kline, J., and Wilchens, D. 1998. “Measuring Heterogeneous Preferences for Preserving Farmland and Open Space.” Ecological Economics 26(2): 211–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, J., Mackey, J., and Casey, F. 2007. “What's in Noah's Wallet? Land Conservation Spending in the United States.” BioScience 57(5): 419–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, L., and Musser, W.N. 2001. “A Relative Efficiency Analysis of Farmland Preservation Programs.” Land Economics 77(4): 577–594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malczewski, J. 1999. GIS and Multicriteria Decision Analysis. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
McMahon, E., Mastran, S., and Phillips, B. Jr. 2004. “Better Models for Development in Delaware.” The Conservation Fund, Arlington, VA. Google Scholar
Messer, K.D. 2006. “The Conservation Benefits of Cost-Effective Land Acquisition: A Case Study in Maryland.” Journal of Environmental Management 79(3): 305–315.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Messina, V., and Bosetti, V. 2003. “Uncertainty and Option Value in Land Allocation Problems.” Annals of Operations Research 124(1/4): 165–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messina, V., and Bosetti, V. 2006. “Integrating Stochastic Programming and Decision Tree Techniques in Land Conversion Problems.” Annals of Operations Research 142(1): 243–258.Google Scholar
Moore, J., Balmford, A., Allnutt, T., and Burgess, N. 2004. “Integrating Costs into Conservation Planning across Africa.” Biological Conservation 117(3): 343–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naidoo, R., Balmford, A., Ferraro, P.J., Polasky, S., Ricketts, T.H., and Rouget, M. 2006. “Integrating Economic Costs into Conservation Planning.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 21(12): 681–687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ozdemir, S., Boyle, K.J., Ahearn, M., Alberini, A., Bergstrom, J., Libby, L., and Welsh, M.P. 2004. “Preliminary Report: Farmland Conservation Easement Study for the United States, Georgia, Ohio and Maine Samples.” Working paper, Department of Resource Economics and Policy, University of Maine, Orono, ME.Google Scholar
Polasky, S., Camm, J.D., and Garber-Yonts, B. 2001. “Selecting Biological Reserves Cost-Effectively: An Application to Terrestrial Vertebrate Conservation in Oregon.” Land Economics 77(1): 68–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prendergast, J.R., Quinn, R.M., and Lawton, J.H. 1999. “The Gaps between Theory and Practice in Selecting Nature Reserves.” Conservation Biology 13(3): 484–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ReVelle, C.S., Williams, J.C., and Boland, J.J. 2002. “Counterpart Models in Facility Location Science and Reserve Selection Science.” Environmental Modeling and Assessment 7(2): 71–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodrigues, A.S.L., Cerdeir, J.O., and Gaston, K.J. 2000. “Flexibility, Efficiency, and Accountability: Adapting Reserve Selection Algorithms to More Complex Conservation Problems.” Ecography 23(5): 565–574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodrigues, A.S.L., and Gaston, K.J. 2002. “Optimization in Reserve Selection Procedures—Why Not?” Biological Conservation 107(1): 123–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saaty, T.L. 1982. Decision Making for Leaders: The Analytic Hierarchy Process for Decisions in a Complex World. Pittsburgh, PA: RWS Publications.Google Scholar
Strager, M.P., and Rosenberger, R.S. 2006. “Incorporating Stakeholder Preferences for Land Conservation: Weights and Measures in Spatial MCA.” Ecological Economics 57(4): 627–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strager, M.P., and Rosenberger, R.S. 2007. “Aggregating High-Priority Landscape Areas to the Parcel Level: An Easement Implementation Tool.” Journal of Environmental Management 82(2): 290–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strange, N., Rahbek, C., Jepsen, J.K., and Lund, M. 2006. “Using Farmland Prices to Evaluate Cost-Efficiency of National versus Regional Reserve Selection in Denmark.” Biological Conservation 128(4): 455–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Underhill, L.G. 1994. “Optimal and Suboptimal Reserve Selection Algorithms.” Biological Conservation 70(1): 85–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture. 2009. “State Fact Sheets: Delaware State Agriculture.” Economic Research Service, USDA, Washington, D.C. Available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/About.htm (accessed April 20, 2009).Google Scholar
Weber, T.C. 2007. “Development and Application of a Statewide Conservation Network in Delaware, U.S.A.” Journal of Conservation Planning 3(1): 17–46.Google Scholar
Wilson, K.A., McBride, M.F., Bode, M., and Possingham, H.P. 2006. “Prioritizing Global Conservation Efforts.” Nature 440(7082): 337–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilson, R.L., Reely, B.T., and Cox, M. 1997. “The Water Resource Management System (WREMS): Linking Data Management and Operational Optimization.” Annals of Operations Research 72(0): 105–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar