Valuing Provisioning Ecosystem Services in Agriculture: The Impact of Climate Change on Food Production in the United Kingdom

This paper provides an estimate of the contribution of the ecosystem to the provisioning services generated by agriculture. This is achieved by valuing the changes in productivity generated by a marginal alteration in ecosystem inputs. As an example, we consider the variation in rainfall and temperature projected by the recent UK Climate Impacts Programme. The analysis implements a spatially explicit, econometric model of agricultural land use based on the methodology recently developed by Fezzi and Bateman (Am J Agric Econ 93:1168–1188, 2011). Land use area and livestock stocking rates are then employed to calculate farm gross margin estimates of the value of changes in provisioning ecosystem services. Findings suggest that the variation in ecosystem inputs induced by climate change will have substantial influence on agricultural productivity. Interestingly, within the UK context climate change generates mainly positive effects, although losses are forecasted for those southern areas most vulnerable to heat-stress and drought.