Isy Picciotto

Estimating the Nonfatal Injury Undercount in Agriculture between 2004-2019
Isabelle Picciotto, Timothy Beatty, Alexandra Estvan Hill
Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health, vol. 28(3), 2021, pp. 181-202
DOI: 10.13031/jash.15039

Abstract. State and federal governments spend billions of dollars on programs that provide subsidies to agricultural producers for on-farm actions to improve environmental outcomes, such as cover crops or efficiency-enhancing irrigation technologies. Evaluating these programs is econometrically complex due to the voluntary nature of participation and the ``black box'' evaluation of applicants. These challenges make it difficult to evaluate the realized effects on natural resources. Programs may have unintended consequences. Behavioral responses to efficiency improvements, for example, may cause a rebound effect in resource use, eroding potential benefits. I use granular applicant-level data for California's State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) to account for program selection combined with large volume field-level geospatial data to estimate whether receiving irrigation efficiency subsidies result in adjustments to production decisions that may cause a rebound effect. Across the entire set of applicants, on average, I find that program enrollment has no significant effect on crop choice or water use. However, I find distinct heterogeneities in how irrigation efficiency improvements influence crop choice and water use depending on the source of water used for irrigation, groundwater regulatory standards, and the type of technology installed. For applicants who have access to surface water for irrigation or do not install specific micro irrigation technologies, I find evidence of a rebound effect, demonstrated by switching to more water-intensive crops or increasing consumptive water use. Conversely, I find precisely estimated null effects for applicants that exclusively use groundwater and a decrease in consumptive water use for funded applicants that install micro irrigation technologies. The purpose of SWEEP is to reduce water use and energy use. I find that the effects of the program vary significantly across different groups such that the average effect of the program is zero. Taken together, these results illustrate the importance of agro-environmental program targeting.

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