| This study focused on the soil conservation decision analysis. Short- and long-run impacts of productivity loss from soil erosion on conservation decisions were examined. The relevant crop-yield, soil-depth (C-S) function was estimated for a fragipan soil using data from Western Kentucky. In measuring the magnitude of erosion-induced productivity loss, interaction between the soil depths and the weather pattern and interaction between the soil depth and technical progress were taken into account.;An erosion-damage function (or EDF with an n-year delay in the conservation adoption) was used considering the long-run impact of (on-site) soil erosion. The EDF proposed in this study extends the EDF with 1-year delay in the conservation adoption introduced by Walker (1982). With the proposed model, the soil conservation decisionmaking procedure becomes applicable and useful not only to individual farmers but also to a conservation agency in determining target sites for conservation program.;The decision analysis based on EDF is long-run in nature. In a situation where crop yield is strongly related to (above normal, normal and below normal) weather patterns which interact with soil depths, the analysis must be based on the expected yields. Hence, when short-run survivability of the farm is of prime concern, then it was suggested that the long-run analysis must not be used alone. A short-run analysis is required, and attention must be given to the break-even point of the production activity assuming below normal weather pattern prevailed. In this study, a game theory approach was used as a supplemental analysis to complete a soil conservation decisionmaking process. |
