Abstract
A growing body of empirical studies indicate that farmers are concerned about how agricultural practices may affect health risks and environmental quality. These studies suggest that farmers are not simply profit maximizers. Instead, they have multiple objectives that include health and environmental concerns. As a result, their privately optimal behavior can result in less use of polluting inputs than would result from straight profit maximization. A recent survey of Michigan corn growers found that many do care about herbicide risks, but that growers often lack adequate information about associated health and environmental risks. Results on willingness to pay (WTP) for reduced risk from herbicide leaching, carcinogenicity and fish toxicity suggest that better information could induce crop farmers to reduce nonpoint-source pollution.
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Swinton, S.M., Owens, N.N., van Ravenswaay, E.O. (1999). Health Risk Information to Reduce Water Pollution. In: Casey, F., Schmitz, A., Swinton, S., Zilberman, D. (eds) Flexible Incentives for the Adoption of Environmental Technologies in Agriculture. Natural Resource Management and Policy, vol 17. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4395-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4395-0_16
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