摘要：This paper reviews the risk assessments prepared by the U.S. Department ofAgriculture (USDA) in support of regulations implementing the Conservation ReserveProgram (CRP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). These two naturalresource conservation programs were authorized as part of the 1996 Farm Bill. The riskassessments were required under the Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department ofAgriculture Reorganization Act of 1994. The framework used for the assessments wasappropriate, but the assessments could be improved in the areas of assessments endpointselection, definition, and estimation. Many of the assessment endpoints were too diffuse orill-defined to provide an adequate characterization of the program benefits. Two reasons forthis lack of clarity were apparent: 1) the large, unprioritized set of natural resourceconservation objectives for the two programs and 2) there is little agreement about whatchanges in environmental attributes caused by agriculture should be considered adverse andwhich may be considered negligible. There is also some "double counting" of programbenefits. Although the CRP and EQIP are, in part, intended to assist agricultural producerswith regulatory compliance, the resultant environmental benefits would occur absent theprograms. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for continuing efforts toconduct regulatory analyses of these major conservation programs. The centralrecommendation is that future risk assessments go beyond efforts to identify the naturalresources at greatest risk due to agricultural production activities and instead providescientific input for analyses of the cost-effectiveness of the conservation programs.
