The Effect of Carbon Reducing Policies on Production on the Texas High Plains

Increased interest in the connection between greenhouse gases and climate change has lead to several attempts to implement policies meant to limit the amount of carbon emitted in the United States.  Given these efforts, along with the attitude of the current administration toward energy and climate issues, it is necessary for both policy makers and producers to understand the effect that carbon reducing policies will have on agricultural production at the regional level.  This paper develops a model that measures carbon emissions for the Texas High Plains region and estimates the effect of restricting carbon emissions on net revenue, acres planted, and the amount of water used.  A representative farm was developed using data from NASS, extension service budgets, and previous studies, and a linear programming model was developed that maximized net revenue.  Using carbon equivalents based on data from extension budgets, the amount of carbon emitted in the baseline scenario was calculated, and by restricting the amount of carbon emitted to ninety-five percent and eighty-five percent of the baseline calculation, the effect of reducing carbon was analyzed.  Results show that while the number of acres planted in the region would not change, the amount of water applied to crops for irrigation would decrease significantly; thus, carbon reduction policies tend to act as water conservation policies as well.