Surf and Turf: Tourists’ Values for Multifunctional Working Landscapes and Water Quality in Colorado

Abstract

Agricultural lands have long been valued for their productive benefits. More recently, farm and ranchlands (working landscapes) have come to be recognized for the many services that they provide beyond food and fiber. These multifunctional benefits provided by agricul tural lands can include the preservation of a rural lifestyle, aesthetic values from the agri cultural landscape, and the provision of ecosys tem services. While there is generally no market-based compensation to farmers for their stewardship of these and other nonmar ket services, the provision and value of mul tifunctional services represent an increasingly important?and in some cases dominant? motivation for agricultural policy in many re gions. Since the 1980s, nonmarket valuation meth ods have been used to estimate the value of farmland amenities to local residents. Bergstrom and Ready (2009) provide a com prehensive review of previous studies that measure the nonmarket benefits of farmland amenities over the last two decades. To date, most studies have focused on the value of , farmland to local residents and have not ad