Pricing of Soil and Water Conservation in Agriculture

Abstract

Various soil processes are responsible for the flow and maintenance of ecosystems services within a soil type in a landscape. The human-induced pressure causes land degradation like soil erosion, depletion of soil organic matter, loss of soil biodiversity, acidification, mechanical compaction, secondary salinization (from irrigation water) and contamination by industrial wastes. These degradations are damaging the capacity of soil to perform optimum soil functions. Soil erosion is the major cause of land degradation which causes huge losses to the economy through loss of provisioning, regulating, and supporting ecosystem services (ESs). Study revealed that global economic losses from soil erosion is around US $ 8 billion annually, due to reduced soil fertility, decreased crop yields and increased water usage. However, proper implementation of soil and water conservation (SWC) measures and sediment control programmes can reduce the erosion and sediment loads of water bodies. Soil conservation measures are sustainable if the supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem services provided by soil are maintained or enhanced without significantly impairing the soil functions. In this chapter, for easy understanding, some important soil functions are compared for two contrasting ecosystems at three different locations within a landscape in hill and mountain ecosystem of India. Overall, the aggregated soil quality was better in adjoining forest sites than that of terraced croplands. It clearly showed that to maximize the crop productivity through intensive cultivation, there is massive compromise with the soil ecosystem functions. We highlighted here that in hill and mountain ecosystem, land use land cover change through legume intercropping in maize had the highest additional ESs to the tune of USD 457 (INR. 33637) compared to without inter cropping. Interestingly, here the contribution of regulating service was more (to the tune of USD 241; INR. 17735) than the provisioning service (USD 210; INR. 15461). The analysis of different parameters in a participatory watershed management study revealed that the ecosystem benefits due to soil and water conservation intervention in a watershed can be realized by understanding the saving of travel time for odder and fuel collection, soil retention through erosion control, nutrient build-up and carbon sequestration. Earlier (before the watershed intervention) the women community used to travel to near-by forest areas for the purpose of collecting fuel-woods and fodder. After 27 years, they realized the importance of soil and water conservation intervention in terms of many provisioning and intangible benefits. Although, more detail information and computation methodology needs to be established to compute the all other benefits. Soil degradation is a severe global concern for food security and ecosystem sustainability due to landslides, erosion, and a reduction in soil carbon and biodiversity. Soils' contribution to human well-being goes beyond food production, and this may be addressed by incorporating soils into the ecosystem services framework and linking it to the diverse functions it performs. Much research has been done on soil and ecosystem services, but not all of them have looked at the direct relationship between soil qualities and ecosystem services.