Modeling Agricultural Production Considering Water Quality and Risk

Environmental goals often conflict with the economic goals of agricultural producers. The Cottonwood River in Minnesota is heavily polluted with nitrogen, phosphate and sediment from agricultural sources in the watershed. Goals of profit maximization for producers conflict with those of effluent alleviation. We incorporate water quality goals and risk into a mathematical programming framework to examine economically efficient means of pollution abatement while considering a wide range of alternative production practices.