Environmental Risk Management in the Horticultural
Industry
Doug Parker and Uddin Helal*
Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Maryland
Submitted to:
American Agricultural Economics Association
2000 Annual Conference
Tampa Bay, Florida
July 29 - August 2, 2000
Copyright 2000 by Doug Parker and Uddin Helal. All rights reserved. Readers may
make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means,
provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
* Doug Parker is an Associate Professor and Uddin Helal is a graduate research assistant
at the University of Maryland, College Park
1
Environmental Risk Management in the Horticultural
Industry
Doug Parker and Uddin Helal
Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Maryland
Short Abstract
This paper uses environmental risk assessment as a nutrient management planning
tool to determine the best set of actions to control nutrient nonpoint source pollution in
the horticultural industry. The framework minimizes costs subject to obtaining an
environmental risk management score at or below a threshold value.
Introduction
The issue of regulatory structure has received increased attention as the U.S. EPA
and the USDA have sought to control more pollution from agricultural nonpoint sources
(USDA and USEPA, 1999). Regulations of point sources have traditionally employed a
command and control (C&C) structure whose constraints were often set by assessing the
abilities of the best available technology to reduce pollutants. Economists have long
argued that this type of approach is costly to the industries involved (for a review see
Batie and Ervin, 1999). This type of regulatory control can stifle innovation by making it
more difficult to use new technologies and by reducing the potential benefits from new
technologies. Still, for many point source pollutants, the homogeneity within an industry
tends to limit the losses from uniform C&C regulations.
As regulators increas