Florida Ranchers’ Willingness to Adopt Silvopasture Practices: A Dichotomous Choice Contingent Valuation Approach

Silvopasture is considered as an environmentally benign land use system relative to conventional cattle ranching. However, most of the environmental benefits of silvopasture are external while the costs are internal to ranchers providing ranchers little or no motivation to implement silvopasture practices. We assessed Florida ranchers’ willingness to adopt silvopasture practices using a dichotomous choice contingent valuation method. The results suggest that ranchers will adopt silvopature practices for a premium price of $0.15 /lb. of beef or a direct payment of $9.32 /acre/year. We estimate that the total annual payments required for the adoption of silvopasture practices in Florida would be $56.45 $72.43 million.