Guelph, ON – Agri-Environmental BMP’s can be highly effective, but because they can come into conflict, policy encouraging BMP’s requires extensive effort.
Remarkable environmental improvements can be obtained through agri-environmental beneficial management practices (BMP’s). But their actual efficacy can be context-specific, and some BMP’s can come into conflict with others- and actually make some things worse or create new problems- even as they attempt to make others better.
An Independent Agri-Food Policy Note released today explains the challenges this presents to policies to encourage adoption of agri-environmental BMP’s, and efforts implied to make them successful.
“Our existing framework for agri-environmental policy is not aligned with tradeoffs that can exist among BMP’s”, said Charlie Lalonde, Agri-Food Economic Systems Research Associate, and co-author of the policy note. “In supporting broad adoption BMP’s without enhanced planning and monitoring, we can end up undoing some of the benefits, and create new adverse effects”.
The policy note provides examples of selected conflicts among agronomic BMP’s, and explains the perils of broad policy agendas for BMP’s set at a distance from the context in which BMP’s will apply.
“There is no good alternative to the hard work of understanding the problem, making choices of clear public priorities, and then monitoring the success, failures, and unintended consequences of the BMP’s enlisted as solutions”, says Al Mussell, Agri-Food Economic Systems Research Lead, and co-author of the policy note. “Agriculture can be a major solutions provider to the key environmental challenges of our time, but governments that fail to step up to engage the detailed nuances of BMP’s undermine this and place the agricultural sector at risk of much stricter regulatory approaches”.
Source : Agri-Food Economic Systems