In a nutshell, ecosystem service markets allow businesses and utilities to meet environmental goals by paying farmers, ranchers and other landowners to produce environmental benefits. They operate by creating a system for generating and certifying “credits” for individual units of an ecosystem service. Entities that need to reduce their environmental impacts (such as municipal wastewater utilities) can buy credits from entities (including farms and ranches) that voluntarily reduce their own impacts. Credits account for real, measurable improvements in the environment. As a result, ecosystem service markets are inherently performance-based: they pay for real, quantifiable environmental benefits.
Advancing the development of ecosystem service markets will require better outreach strategies to engage farmers and ranchers, user-friendly tools to encourage their success, and the support of on-farm conservation investments in a way that reflects the particular needs, challenges, and potential of agriculture.
“Changes in the 2012 Farm Bill appear both likely and may be significant, if not radical. Our country’s economic situation will be the most significant driver and agent of change in the 2012 Farm Bill.” — Jon Scholl, President, American Farmland Trust
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“We need to basically bring ourselves together, converge our thoughts, our minds, our resources, in terms of where we want to be with agriculture in this country utilizing the tools that a federal government might bring together — to start really very seriously preparing ourselves for an exciting process that is ultimately a plan for the agricultural future of this country.” — AG Kawamura, former California Secretary of Agriculture and co-chair of Solutions From the Land
