Land degradation by erosion and its economic consequences for the region of South Moravia (Czech Republic)

Conserving Water in Irrigated Agriculture: The Economics and Valuation of Water Rights

Assessing high quality agricultural lands through the ecosystem services lens: Insights from a rapidly urbanizing agricultural region in the western United States

The aim of this article is to assess the effect of the applied land valuation system on the price of land, and as a consequence of the implied links to compare the valuation of soil units in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In order to fulfil this objective, an econometric approach was chosen in the form of a hedonic price model, whereby the heteroscedastic corrected linear regression model was specifically applied. The estimated model shows a very high explanatory ability, together with a high parametric significance for most fictitious variables (land characteristics), and at the same time also fulfils the theoretical and logical consistency of general assumptions. From the results, it is evident that, in the case of Slovakia, ESEU [evaluated soil ecological unit] valuation is affected primarily by the climatic region and the main soil unit. When comparing the results of the effect of individual input factors on the price of land in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, it can be stated that the results are slightly different in the effect of certain factors. The characteristics of soils located in warm climatic regions with a valuable soil type of chernozem and low slope are significant and positively intensive factors.

The effective management of water resources in Alberta is crucial to sustainable agriculture, industrial development, and environmental management. The historical water allocation mechanism, administrative apportionment, has been viewed in recent years as ineffective and cumbersome. Accordingly, the revision of the Water Act in 1996, included an attempt to improve the efficiency of water allocation. By making the transfer of water rights possible, the revised Act provides many new options for water use and flexibility. The implications of transferable water rights in Alberta water policy must be carefully considered in order to determine the viability and suitability of such a system in the provincial context. This project examines some of the economic aspects of transferable water rights and the potential for effective water allocation by way of transfers in an Alberta setting. As a major part of this project, a hedonic price model, focusing on land values in southern Alberta, was constructed based on similar models, which have been used elsewhere to value water rights or agricultural products. The hedonic approach to market analysis uses the relationship between the price of land and the attributes of the land, such as water availability, soil quality and location, to explain differences in land prices. In this process, the hedonic model is used to estimate the implicit marginal price or value of each land attribute -- in our case, the marginal value of irrigation water. This value will provide us with an indirect estimate of the value of water rights in the region studied. An advantage of the technique is that it estimates the value that farmers express for irrigation water in the market place for land. Such values, then, give us an indication of the anticipated prices, which might prevail for water rights in southern Alberta. The focus of the study was an area of southern Alberta encompassing the counties of Wheatland, Newell, Cypress, Forty Mile, Taber, Warner, Lethbridge and Vulcan and the irrigation districts of Western, Eastern, St.Mary's, Taber, Lethbridge Northern, and portions of Raymond. Information was collected on the physical and economic characteristics of 230 land parcels, which were sold in this region in 1993 and early 1994. A crude comparison of the value of irrigated agricultural land and non-irrigated agricultural land in the sample reveals that irrigated land was worth, on average, $325 more per acre than non-irrigated land. In the ensuing analysis, it was estimated that the value of a parcel of land was determined largely by the buildings on it, the number of acres in the parcel, the proximity of the parcel to a major city (in this case Calgary or Lethbridge), and by the availability of irrigation water. In the hedonic model, the coefficient values of the variables included represent the marginal impact of each of these characteristics on land prices holding all other things constant. For example, the value of water rights represents the average difference between land values of farms that have access to irrigation and farms that do not. This study estimated that every dollar of improvements to farm buildings translates to a one cent increase in the per acre price of the land parcel, where the addition of one extra acre of land to a land parcel lowers the price per acre by $5.17 per acre. Land prices were seen to increase with the proximity of the parcel to large cities. Similarly, the results of the preferred model indicate that the implicit value of having access to irrigation water in southern Alberta is approximately $190 per acre, or, using the conventional estimate that irrigating one acre of land requires 1.5 acre feet of water, this translates to $126 per acre foot of irrigation water. Accordingly, it is revealed that the existence of water rights adds approximately 35% to the value of non-irrigated land. Since this value represents the implicit amount farmers are willing to pay for access to water, it could also be construed as an indirect measure of the value of water rights. From these results, it is reasonable to conclude that water rights do have a measurable impact on land values. Accordingly, proper incentives may be needed to ensure that water is used efficiently and not incorrectly treated as a relatively free or cheap good. One possible method of policy reform to achieve such a system would be the institution of a system of transferable water rights, permitting water to be traded, or effectively sold, at its market price or scarcity value. Further work was done to determine the potential effects of transferable water rights on the Eastern Irrigation District in southern Alberta. Farm budget information was used to gather information and create twelve representative farm types whose financial performance was analysed using linear programming with increasing water quantity constraints. The resulting productive water values were then used to imply potential reallocations of water among farm types and cropping systems. Analysis of the data gathered revealed that all representative farms faced downward sloping demand functions for water. The overall value of water for a 1% reduction ranged from $8 to $250 per acre foot, with the lowest value belonging to largely pasture operations and the highest value attributed to specialty crop producers. This large range in water values for the region indicates that there is sufficient heterogeneity within the EID to accommodate a transferable rights system. Further analysis of the data reveals that the implementation of a transfer system would result in water being transferred to specialty crop producers and the acreage devoted to specialty crops would increase. Small irrigated pasture operations and cereal crop producers would be the first to give up their water allocations under a transfer system. The analysis indicates that there is considerable potential for economic gains from water trade within this district, the main constraint being the market limitations to expanded specialty crop production. Using these two major studies and other sources, this report concludes with a brief evaluation of the economic advantages, disadvantages and other issues involved in instituting a system of transferable water rights in Alberta. Experience elsewhere, primarily in Australia and the western United States, strongly suggests that transferable water rights, despite some drawbacks and problems of implementation, can be a very worthwhile water policy tool. Now that such tradable water rights are permissible under the revised Water Resources Act of 1996, it is recommended that a pilot project involving transferable water rights be instituted in a water short basin or sub-basin in southern Alberta once a water management plan for that basin is completed.

Purpose The prices and rents of land depend on its marginal productivity and a number of other factors (the range of economic and policy-related factors). Significant changes in the European Union (EU) agricultural policy and changes in productivity models in recent years have influenced land market dynamics. To properly understand the dynamics in the land market and relate it to changes in agricultural production and policy, it is important to establish a multi-factor model that would allow the main factors determining changes in land rental prices in the EU to be assessed. Design/methodology/approach The article proposes an index decomposition analysis model to explain changes in land price at the country level. The logarithmic mean Divisia index is used for the decomposition of agricultural land prices into their key contributing factors. The proposed index decomposition analysis model is used with data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network. The empirical case of the EU countries over 2004–2022 is considered. The proposed approach allows one to measure the contributions of different factors towards changes in land rent based on the production theory. Findings The results indicate that growth in agricultural output per hectare appears to be the major cause behind changes in agricultural land rent. Increasing land productivity can be attributed to improved agricultural practices and the application of intermediate inputs. The price changes are also included in the analysis. During the period under review, land and rental prices and farm profitability indicators increased in most EU countries. Average growth in land rents in the EU-28 was around 2.2%, while land prices grew at 1.3%. The fastest growth in rental prices was recorded in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic (10.6–17.1%), while that for land prices was recorded in Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia (10.4–26.2%). Land prices have also increased relative to the income generated by a land unit. This can be attributed to a €12/ha increase in the land rent price. Increasing agricultural subsidies have also played a stimulating role with respect to changes in agricultural land rent in the EU-28. However, this effect amounted to an increase in the agricultural land rent of just €7/ha. Originality/value The proposed approach allows one to isolate the effects of land rent price changes with respect to multiple factors. These factors explain land productivity, support rate and the situation in the land market. The proposed model can also be adjusted to explain dynamics in the land rent in other contexts.

The article substantiates the business processes of soil use digitization in order to increase their quality and price in the conditions of the formation of the agricultural land market in Ukraine. For this purpose, environmentally appropriate, socially necessary and economically justified processes have been developed to create synergy in the balance of price and quality of agricultural land. It is proposed to use the ecological audit methodology for these reasons: expert assessment of the quality and price of land; attraction of “green” investments to restore land quality; using the digitization tool - e-calculator. The methodology for building the e-calculator is based on a system of possibilities: obtaining the maximum yield while balancing nutrients in the soil; soil quality improvement under the conditions of planning to obtain the planned harvest with minimal investments; increasing the content of nutrients in the soil to increase the price of agricultural land. The conducted calculations confirm that: preservation and reproduction of the groats fertility guarantees obtaining larger harvests in the future; increases the value of land as the main means of production; increases the investment attractiveness and liquidity of agricultural land. It is substantiated that the costs of carrying out agrochemical measures are profitable investments.

Rapid conversion of agricultural, flood flow and sub-flood flow lands into urban uses at the periphery of Dhaka city increases the demand for developing useful supply, demand, and pricing models. Nevertheless, pricing land offers a challenging task. During high economic growth time, the conventional belief was that land values should soar with increasing demand and decreasing vacancies. Conversely, accurate anticipation of these values is problematic since spatial factors are often influential ones along with other characteristics of land. Moreover, land represents not only a bundle of physical characteristics but also sets of location-specific, transport, urban amenity, socio-economic and environmental characteristics. The extent of such characteristics on land market can be estimated by applying Spatial Autoregression model. The objective of this paper is to carry out an empirical analysis to examine the effects of different land characteristics on land prices in Savar municipality by using Spatial Auto-Regression (SAR) model. In particular, spatial econometric procedures (spatial autocorrelation) and spatial auto-regression analysis are applied to determine spatial dependence among the land value of plots and to evaluate the impact of land characteristics on land prices in the land market of Savar municipality respectively. The findings of this paper reveal that transport attributes have most significiant relationship with the land value and other explanatory variables like municipal amenities, physical characteristics of the plot, employment attraction, and commercial services are also influential factors of land price.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbip.v2i0.9571Journal of Bangladesh Institute of Planners Vol. 2, December 2009, pp. 107-115

This research aims to examine the characteristics of agricultural land parcels in the district Charsadda of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and identify important factors influencing agricultural land prices. For this purpose, a sample of 100 land parcels with transaction records for the year 2023 was randomly selected from 10 villages in the Charsadda district. Information was collected on prices and their agricultural, geographical, and physical characteristics. The characteristics of agricultural land were summarized using a descriptive statistical approach. A Linear Hedonic Hedonic Pricing (HPM) model was used to evaluate agricultural land prices based on physical, locational, and agricultural characteristics. Due to their significant residential and commercial value, the results showed that the price of agricultural land parcels in the Charsadda district is comparatively high. The construction of roads, Hospitals, Schools, and Gas supply in Charsadda city attracts more people from the district's rural areas, raising the demand for commercial and residential land. Due to high demand, the agricultural land that is being used for residential and commercial purposes increases the land prices. According to study findings, about 22% of agricultural land is used for commercial and residential purposes. The findings of the study showed that irrigation water availability and soil fertility are the important factors of high agricultural land prices. Location-associated characteristics such as city and road distance, distance from residential to market, and agricultural land are the significant determinants driving agricultural land prices. To address the rising agricultural land prices in Charsadda, a comprehensive land use planning policy should be implemented.

Contents: Part I: Studies Based on Given Political-Government Institutions and Full Private or Public Ownership: Ricardian Rent: Theory: Interactions between agricultural and environmental policies: a conceptual framework, Richard E. Just and John M. Antle The Ricardian rent and the allocation of land under uncertainty, Jean-Paul Chavas Land quality, irrigation development, and cropping patterns in the Northern High Plains, Erik Lichtenberg. Applications: Representative Owner Applications: A dynamic model of acreage allocation with general and crop-specific soil capital, Peter F. Orazem and John A. Miranowski Mining the soil: agricultural production system on peatland, Renan U. Goetz and David Zilberman. Grouped Land Use and Aggregated Data: The impact of policies and land characteristics on potential groundwater pollution in Wisconsin, JunJie Wu and Kathleen Segerson Responsiveness of rural and urban land uses to land rent determinants in the U.S. South, Ian Hardie, Peter Parks, Peter Gottlieb and David Wear. Explicit Aggregation Methods: Unintended impacts of public investments on private decisions: the depletion of forested wetlands, Robert N. Stavins and Adam B. Jaffe Econometric-process models for integrated assessment of agricultural production systems, John M. Antle and Susan M. Capalbo. Policy Maker Decision Models: Minimum cost strategies for sequestering carbon in forests, Darius M. Adams, Ralph J. Alig, Bruce A. McCarl, John M. Callaway and Steven M. Winnett The economics of a public fund for environmental amenities: a study of CRP contracts, Bruce A. Babcock, P.G. Lakshminarayan, JunJie Wu and David Zilberman. Space - Von ThA nen Rent: Theory: The pattern and timing of land development in a long run equilibrium urban land use model, Alex Anas The fundamentals of land prices and urban growth, Dennis R. Capozza and Robert W. Helsley The stochastic city, Dennis R. Capozza and Robert W. Helsley. Applications: Urban Growth Model: Growth controls and land values in an open city, Jan K. Brueckner Urban spatial structure with open space, C.H. Yang and M. Fujita Agricultural land values and the value of rights to future land development, Andrew J. Plantinga and Douglas J. Miller. Site Price Models: Woodland deforestation by charcoal supply to Dar es Salaam, Ole Hofstad Human-environmental influences and interactions in shifting agriculture when farmers form expectations rationally, D.W. Jones and R.V. O'Neill. Landscape-Location Studies of Land Use: Roads, land use, and deforestation: a spatial model applied to Belize, Kenneth M. Chomitz and David A. Gray On the price of land and the value of amenities, Paul Cheshire and Stephen Sheppard Modeling ecological constraints on tropical forest management: spatial interdependence, irreversibility, and uncertainty, Heidi J. Albers Interacting agents, spatial externalities and the evolution of residential land use patterns, Elena G. Irwin and Nancy E. Bockstael. Part II: Studies with Given Political - Government Institutions That Do Not Have Complete Property Rights: Open Access Public Property: Nepali fuelwood production and consumption: regional and household distinctions, substitution and successful intervention, Gregory S. Amacher, William F. Hyde and Keshav R. Kanel Tropical deforestation, tenure insecurity, and unsustainability, Edward B. Barbier and Joanne C. Burgess Indigenous land rights in Sub-Saharan Africa: appropriation, security, and investment demand, Espen Sjaastad and Daniel W. Bromley. Commons: Environmental externalities in traditional agriculture and the impact of trade liberalization: the case of Ghana, RamA^3n LA^3pez Land allocation under dual individual-collective use in Mexico, Nancy McCarthy, Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet. Takings: The economic consequences of regulatory taking risk on land value and development activity, Timothy J. Riddiough. Part III: Studies With Mutable Government Institutions-Political Economy of Land Use: Assessing the relationship between government policy and deforestation, Robert T. Deacon Agricultural land relations in the developing world, Hans P. Binswanger, Klaus Deininger and Gershon Feder A study in resistance to institutional change: the lost game of Latin American land reform, Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet Takings, compensation, and equal treatment for owners of developed and undeveloped property, Robert Innes Name index.

Many different characteristics affect the land prices. This work attempts to analyse the characteristics of agricultural parcels, which significantly affect the variability of agricultural land prices. The article presents the methodology of selection land parcel characteristics, rules for the selection of factors and possibility of automatic acquisition of data in mass valuation process. The research aims at selecting determinants of agricultural land parcels price and evaluate theirs significance in a local market for the purpose of land values map elaboration. Using advanced statistical analysis of a non-linear influence of a parcel inherent characteristics on its price we proved that in the relatively small area, like commune, only a few characteristics are essential, They are: parcel size, shape and location expressed by distance to the commune centre, paved roads and homestead buildings. Therefore, these ones should be used for elaboration of land values map. Soil quality and a cropland type although significant for the land prices do not diversify land prices in local market. The novelty of the research relays on determination of non-linear influence of parcel characteristics on variation of agricultural land values based on the correlation ratio (h eta). The research was conducted for the undeveloped agricultural lands located in south-west Poland, the rural municipality Krotoszyce.

The Czech Republic is more or less unique in its dual system (official and market price) of agricultural land prices. In the case of the market price, there are several studies and approaches that assess the impact of individual variables on the market price of land. If we focus on the official price of land, its value in the Czech Republic is influenced by the evaluated soil ecological unit (ESEU) price. The ESEU price expresses the production potential of the land on the basis of soil quality indicators, which include the climatic region, the main soil unit, slope and exposure and, last but not least, the depth of the soil profile and skeletonisation. Climate change also means that the current values of the definition (e.g., for a climatic region, this refers to the average temperature or average precipitation) do not correspond to reality. No studies have looked in detail at the impact of soil quality indicators or climate change on the price of ESEUs. New and more accurate measurements of soil characteristics are increasing the number of ESEU codes, and prices have not yet been set for some codes. For this reason, we proposed the use of a hedonic method to determine shadow prices, which reflect the intensity and direction of the effect of each input variable on the price of an ESEU. A heteroscedastic corrected linear regression model was used to determine the coefficients, which presents in detail the effect of all included parameters on the final price of an ESEU in the results section. From the results, it was obvious that the shadow price coefficients themselves corresponded to basic generally accepted assumptions regarding the direction of effect. In the conditions of the Czech Republic, a significant influence on the price of an ESEU was mainly the slope with exposure and the depth of the soil profile with skeletonisation. These factors affected the productive capacity of the soil, which, in turn, translated into lower profitability of agricultural entities. The high explanatory ability of the hedonic model, with a high parametric significance for most of the used variables, was an important factor determining the robustness of the model as a repricing tool. The model set according to the prices of the applicable price decree can be used to set the prices of new or not-yet-valued ESEU codes under the conditions in the Czech Republic, or shadow prices can be used during climatic changes in the event of the transfer of the given soil unit to another climate region according to the general specification. It is therefore an important tool for the needs of the public administration.

This article analyzes the dynamics of changes in land property prices in the northwestern governorates of the Russian Empire from 1865 to 1915. The scope of the study includes agricultural and macroeconomic factors that had the greatest influence on the differentiation of land property values. The author aims to verify the current state of research on the land property market in the context of properly estimating land prices. The analysis was based on two types of property. The first concerns estates created based on the so-called Instruction of 1865. Instruction estates could only be purchased and inherited by people of Russian origin and Orthodox faith, i.e., Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. The law prohibited the Polish nobility, peasantry, and townsmen of the Catholic faith, as well as Jews, from purchasing or leasing this property. Violating these provisions resulted in the property being repossessed by the State Treasury. The second category included non-instruction properties, but even their trade, especially in the western governorates, was limited. In addition to the Orthodox population, Polish peasants and Roman Catholic townsmen could also participate in transactions, with the exclusion of the Polish peasantry. The primary source material used for the research on land prices was notarial and archival documentation stored in the historical archives of Poland (Białystok) and Lithuania (Vilnius). Based on the analysis of sale-purchase agreements, it was possible to determine the actual market value of agricultural land in the western borderlands of the Russian Empire over a 50-year period (1865–1915). The study allowed for the identification of the most important agricultural (level of debt, quality of agricultural land, location, state of land development) and macroeconomic (economic conditions, international political situation) factors that had a decisive influence on land prices.

For optimum utiLization of available agricultural land resources on a sustainable basis, timely and reLiable information regarding their nature, extent and spatial distribution along with their potential and Limitations is very important. The efficiency and accuracy of data are improved when remote sensing data products and GIS are used. This study aims at overcoming the difficulty of contributing factors cannot be accurately quantified by using information objectively derivable from remote sensing images. This approach yield a comprehensive agricultural land quaLity (ALQ) assessment using indicators Like slope gradient, proportion of sandy land, water availabiLity, soil fertiLity, and land use types organized into three indices of pressure resistance, land state, and land use response. And this assessment takes account of topographic setting, land degradation risk, moisture, vegetation growing condition, and land use response of farmers. The assessment results demonstrate that the ALQ value is generally low for the whole YuLin prefecture. Two-thirds of the agricultural lands face a serious land degradation risk. As water availabiLity is a decisive factor influencing land productivity, ALQ is significantly correlated with the spatial distribution of water resources. Such assessment outcomes are essential for the prevention of land degradation and adjustment of agricultural structure to promote sustainable use of agricultural land.

In the Czech Republic, a system of evaluated soil-ecological units (ESEU) is used for soil valuation, where the price is determined on the basis of production potential. In practice, the production potential of soil is also very important for spatial planning because it is used to determine the protection class of agricultural land with regard to the possibility of designating it for non-productive purposes. This paper focuses on the application of an econometric model to determine the effect on soil value in selected cadastral areas when the effect of the non-productive function of soil in the form of retention is taken into account. This is effectively an ecosystem service calculation, as only the production function is included in the ESEU price in the Czech Republic. For the purposes of the paper, three alternative scenarios are chosen in which the production price includes the price for the non-production function in the form of retention, in the amounts of 5%, 10% and 20%. The results show that even a 5% inclusion of soil retention has a significant impact on its price and, more precisely, on its value. The difference between the original value and the shadow value with the greatest effect of water retention at the 20% level is approximately CZK 12.3 million for the Ivančice site and approximately CZK 20.6 million for the Lysá nad Labem site, which indicates the importance of changing the current government methodology. The higher increase for the Ivančice site is due to the higher proportion of more productive ESEU and, at the same time, the higher retention capacity of the main soil units (MSU), which is absolutely necessary for the valuation of agricultural land in the main production areas of the Czech Republic. The results confirm that in these most valuable areas, the increased share of ecosystem components would lead to the greatest increase in the price of agricultural land, which can be considered as an adequate and meaningful result, if only in the context of comparing agricultural land prices between EU Member States. The water retention capacity of the soil is a qualitative indicator of the non-productive function of the soil and is increasingly supported as such.

Ascribing land value solely to productive capacity does not accurately capture the impact environmental amenities provide on western land prices. Agricultural land prices in Wyoming are estimated using a hedonic price model and Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) data. These GIS measurements include on-parcel wildlife and fish habitat, viewscape attributes and distance to protected federal lands. A feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) approach is used to address both spatial autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity. The estimation is robust and highly significant. Results indicate that amenities as well as productivity are significant in explaining land values for the sample analyzed. Such information is useful for landscape management in the face of amenity threatening parcel fragmentation.