Additionality in U.S. Agricultural Conservation and Regulatory Offset Programs

by Roger Claassen, John Horowitz, Eric Duquette, and Kohei Ueda

"Additionality" is achieved when a conservation program payment results in actions that improve environmental performance of the farm and that would not have occurred without the payment. ERS estimates additionality in various programs. Errata: On April 20, the estimate for adoption of soil conservation structures for payment farms in Table 4 on page 16 was corrected. The entry for "Estimated without payment" for soil conservation structures is 0.18.

Keywords: Additionality, conservation, payments, offsets, greenhouse gas, U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, Economic Research Service, ERS, ERR-170

In this publication...

• Entire Report
• Report summary
• Download zip file for ERR170