Asymmetric Willingness-to-Pay Distributions for Livestock Manure

• Main Authors: F. Bailey Norwood, Ryan L. Luter, Raymond E. Massey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Western Agricultural Economics Association 2005-12-01
• Series: Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
• Subjects: animal waste; asymmetric distribution; contingent valuation; manure; nonmarket valuation; pollution; willingness to pay
• Online Access: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/30972

The Environmental Protection Agency's new Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) regulations are forcing some farms to export livestock manure to off-farm acres. The regulation compliance cost depends on the willingness of neighboring crop producers to accept or pay for the manure. This study estimates a manure willingness-to-pay distribution for crop producers using a contingent valuation mail survey. A flexible parametric distribution is borrowed from the crop yield literature, which shows that manure willingness to pay is left-skewed. Most crop producers in our sample will pay a positive price close to the savings in commercial fertilizer, but approximately 25% require a payment before accepting manure.