ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a general approach to assess quantitatively the economic, environmental, and health tradeoffs associated with the use of agricultural production technologies, and provides some case studies to illustrate the methodology. Land use decisions determine which particular acres of crop land are put into production and which crops are grown, land management decisions determine the application rates of chemicals, water use, and tillage practices. Physical relationships between the environmental attributes of the land in production and management practices then jointly determine the agricultural output and environmental impacts associated with a particular unit of land in production. The Erosion-Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC) was used to determine the effects of alternative production practices. The EPIC model outputs numerous environmental variables along with estimates of annual yields. The EPIC model was also used to predict relative changes in concentrations of organic carbon in the soil at the end of each thirty year simulation.
