Pricing of Ecosystem Services in Agriculture: A Basis of Crop Insurance

The book deals with the pricing of ecosystem services provided by agriculture. All provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services are being covered in this title. Chapters in this contributed volume cover topics such as pricing of services from the soil, water, and nutrient management. Quantified monetary values of carbon sequestration and renewable energy applications in agriculture are covered with clear-cut methodologies. This book also links ecosystem service-based pricing with crop insurance.

Improving the farmers’ livelihood is the central goal of the agricultural production system throughout the world. Under the climate change context, farms’ produce is now climate-vulnerable and heavily dependent on weather conditions. Moreover, we often neglect the contribution of several positive impacts of agricultural practices on ecosystems and natural resources. Therefore, there is a need to quantify and value these ecosystem services in agriculture. However, valuation and pricing the services in agriculture both tangible and intangible is a challenge. It is necessary to have clear-cut methodologies for pricing ecosystem services of agriculture in terms of net monetary benefits. The ecosystem service-based pricing could be a solid basis for calculating the insurance to farmers in case of occurrence of natural hazard and associated crop damage.

This book is of interest to scholars, teachers, researchers, environmental scientists, watershed managers, capacity builders, and policymakers. The book also serves as effective reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture economics, ecology, agronomy, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists, policymakers will also find this to be useful.

Dr. Pratap Bhattacharyya is currently working as ICAR-National Fellow and Principal Scientist at ICAR-NRRI, Cuttack, Odisha, India. He has done his MSc and PhD from IARI, New Delhi, India. His fields of specialization are climate change, carbon dynamics, GHGs emission-mitigation, resource conservation technologies and microbial diversity in rice. He is Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India (FNAAS); Fellow of IASWC, ARRW and WAST. He received ICAR-LBS young scientist award; Dr K J Tejwani award; Mosaic Foundation award; Certificate of Excellence on Eddy covariance from UGA, USA. He has published more than 150 research papers, 6 books, 20 book chapters, and popular articles. He has guided 5 PhD and 8 MSc students.

Dr. Priyabrata Santra is currently working as Principal Scientist in ICAR-CAZRI, India. He obtained his Masters in Agricultural Physics from IARI, New Delhi and PhD in Soil Physics / Hydrology from IIT, Kharagpur. He visited International Centre on Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and was awarded with Junior Associate (Soil Physics) of ICTP. Dr. Santra worked as visiting scientists at International Soil Research and Information Centre (ISRIC) at Wageningen, Netherland. He was awarded with FAST Track research grant from DST, Govt of India. He received ICAR-LBS Young Scientist award. He is working on natural resources management, digital soil mapping and use of renewable energy on agriculture. He published 64 research papers in reputed international/national journals, three edited books, two authored books and two research bulletins.

Dr. Debashis Mandal is currently working as ICAR-National Fellow at ICAR-IISWC, Dehradun. He received the PhD degree in soil science and agricultural chemistry from IARI, New Delhi. His research interests comprise assessment and monitoring of soil erosion, soil sustainability, land degradation and reclamations processes, and land degradation induced losses of productivity and ecosystem services. Dr. Mandal worked as a visiting scientist at CMASC, at Ohio State University, Columbus, USA and conducted research with Prof. Rattan Lal. He published more than 70 peer reviewed articles in scientific journals and organized several national and international conferences on soil and water conservation.

Dr. B Mondal is working as Principal Scientist at ICAR-National Rice Research Institute (NRRI), India. He obtained his PhD in Agricultural Economics from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He visited Fort Collins, USA as an expert in the Workshop on ＂Threat and Benefit Assessment Methodologies＂ for reactive nitrogen as a part of ’Towards International Nitrogen Management System (INMS)’ program. He is working as Associate Editor of Journal Oryza. His areas of expertise are resource economics, impact analysis, on-farm evaluation of agricultural technologies. He has more than 60 national and international research publications and handled more than 20 research projects.