Which counties in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are doing well or could improve in maximizing agriculture’s economic performance while minimizing environmental impacts?
Crop fields on a farm with housing in the background; Credit: JanaShea via iStock
What Is the Issue?
Counties in the Chesapeake Bay watershed vary in how their agriculture performs economically and environmentally. In some counties, agriculture is thriving economically with small environmental side effects. In others, agriculture is doing well economically but at a large environmental cost, while in some counties agriculture is struggling both economically and environmentally. Which counties in the Chesapeake Bay watershed are doing well in maximizing agriculture’s economic performance while minimizing environmental impacts? Which counties could improve in economic performance, environmental performance, or both?
What Did We Find and Why Does it Matter?
We calculated economic-environmental performance, on a scale from 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest), for 165 counties in the Chesapeake Bay watershed in 2007 and 2017. Higher scores reflect the ability to manage environmental impacts while maintaining economic performance. The scores compare counties to each other, so a score of 1 means the best among the Chesapeake Bay watershed counties in that year.
Figure 1.0 Economic and Environmental Performance of Counties in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. Credit: Sadikshya Sharma, Penn State, Created with Data wrapper
Key findings
- In both 2007 and 2017, counties in the northern tier of the Bay watershed, Shenandoah Valley, and Delmarva Peninsula had high performance scores.
- These three regions differ in how they achieve high performance. The northern tier counties have a low-intensity agriculture focused on forage crop production for beef and dairy cattle. The Shenandoah Valley and Delmarva Peninsula focus on high-intensity poultry production, supported by corn and soybeans grown in those regions.
- The main difference between 2007 and 2017 is in southeastern Pennsylvania, where performance scores improved significantly. Livestock production in southeastern Pennsylvania transitioned away from dairy and toward poultry and eggs during this period, a transition that has continued since.
- The region with the lowest performance scores was along the densely populated Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Across the entire Bay watershed, performance scores tend to be lower in densely populated counties. Farming in urban counties presents greater economic and environmental challenges than in rural counties.
Implications
- Targeted Nutrient Management: Counties with high scores demonstrate that it is feasible to attain strong farm profitability alongside environmental stewardship. These examples can guide the design of local and state programs that prioritize approaches already shown to succeed in comparable contexts.
- Land Retirement Strategies: Counties with persistently low performance scores (especially in more urbanized regions) highlight areas where marginal cropland could be retired or transitioned to other land uses, generating both water quality and economic gains. Agencies may prioritize incentive programs for land retirement where the environmental benefits are highest relative to agricultural income potential.
- Learning From Diverse Strategies: Counties in the northern tier use low-intensity forage-based systems, while Delmarva and Shenandoah counties have high-intensity, well-managed poultry production. Both approaches are associated with high performance scores. These results indicate that multiple production models are compatible with efficiency objectives.
- Resilient Rural Economies: Maximizing joint economic-environmental performance supports farm viability and rural employment—ensuring that agricultural communities can thrive, not just endure, under future economic and environmental stresses.
Economic and environmental efficiency in agriculture within the Chesapeake Bay watershed directly affects both regional livelihoods and the health of the Bay ecosystem. Counties that successfully balance agricultural profitability with minimized nutrient and pesticide runoff are effectively supporting both economic resilience and ecological restoration—two priorities for sustainable land management.
What Did We Do?
We used a technique called data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure the relative efficiency of agriculture in Chesapeake Bay watershed counties with multiple agricultural inputs and outputs. We used data for 165 counties in the Bay watershed from 2007 and 2017. The inputs we examined were excess nitrogen per acre of cropland, excess phosphorus per acre of cropland, toxicity-weighted pesticide use per acre of cropland, average corn yields (a measure of climate and soil conditions), and the average slope of agricultural lands (a measure of soil erosion risk and suitability for mechanized farming). The outputs we examined were average net farm income, the percentage of county land in agriculture, and the percentage of the county labor force working in agriculture. We measured both input-oriented efficiency (reducing environmental impacts, holding economic performance constant) and output-oriented efficiency (improving economic performance, holding environmental impacts constant). The performance figures in this section are the input-oriented efficiency scores. The output-oriented efficiency scores were similar to the input-oriented scores.
Publication completed for this work
Sharma, S. (2024). Balancing economic growth and environmental stewardship: Quantifying trade-offs in forest and agricultural land management [Doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University]. ETDA. https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/26235sbs6203
Contact: Sadikshya Sharma, saduparajuli@gmail.com
