Ecosystem "Services"

One of the so called benefits of growing Kernza, at least one given by it's promoters, is that growers will be able to collect money for "ecosystem services", presumably from the State, or private groups set up to create a "market", e.g. Carbon Cap and Trade. 

 

In my opinion, shared by the authors of this piece, its impossible to put a real number on any of these things because we don't truly know what they are.

So when we don’t know how a system works or exactly what it does, or even when some of us know but not those involved in the model “pricing”, it is impossible to put a high enough figure on these models. They become just a way to undervalue natural resources to enable extraction. Taleb et al came at the same conclusion from a different angle I believe.

It’s not just soil. There are for practical purposes no ecosystems (or any biological systems) that we understand well enough to assign a reasonable price. At it’s heart, this is the same problem that all modern economics has – there is no perfectly aware buyer.

"Economics" - assume a perfectly aware buyer. There are for practical purposes no ecosystems (or any biological systems) that we understand well enough to assign a reasonable price.

[End of speech]

More here - Repairing the Soil Carbon Rift

and then there's this -