Financing on-farm ecosystem services in southern Quebec, Canada: A public call for pesticides reduction

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs in agriculture are designed to encourage farmers to adopt agro-environmental practices through financial or non-financial incentives. Using a choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis, we measured public preferences regarding different constitutive attributes of PES (e.g., types of agro-environmental measures, conditions of payment, responsible institutions, intervention sites) that aimed to reduce pollution from agricultural sources and increase biodiversity in the agricultural landscapes of southern Quebec. The CBC analysis revealed a strong preference by the respondents for a reduction of pesticide dependency in their choice of attributes with regard to the proposed scenarios. By carrying out PES scenario simulations, this study demonstrates that there is a ten times higher willingness to pay for pesticide reduction scenarios than for scenarios aiming to restore hydric resources such as wetlands and riparian-zones. In addition, this study finds a mixed interest in PES programs since ecosystem services generated by agro-environmental practices seem to be misunderstood by the public. Therefore, pesticide reduction could be used as a strategy for financing PES initiatives that are socially acceptable while bringing farmers flexibility in their choice of agro-environmental practices. In this way farmers can achieve pesticide reduction goals while promoting a bundle of ecosystem services.