Paper released
If Agriculture Paid, Paper 3 in the open-access Water Pollution Series (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21500236), asks what happens when agriculture's attributed share of nutrient cleanup cost moves closer to the load share already used in basin plans.
The paper builds on the fiscal ledger in Paper 1. In the basins where Canada concentrates nutrient-management spending, agriculture is credited with roughly three-quarters of the load and a small fraction of public-program cash. Paper 3 turns that gap into a cost-benefit question: remittance alone versus remittance paired with field practices that cut phosphorus and related loading.
Finding that leads the abstract
About half of the externalized bill lines up with export-bound production. Remittance paired with practices that cut load at the field ranks above transfer alone on the paper's cost-benefit frames. The work treats practice change as part of the package, so dollars collected stay tied to measurable load reduction rather than a pure transfer.
How to read it
The PDF is free to download. Zenodo holds the archival DOI. Companion pieces in the series cover who pays today (Paper 1) and how farmland consolidation changes who is named first when rules or claims arrive (Paper 2).
Full paper: Download PDF · Zenodo DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21500236 · Water Pollution Series