The EPS currently tracks the financial impacts of the physical implementation of the land use policies, like afforestation/reforestation (i.e. spending on the afforestation/reforestation effort, and the associated reduction in spending on other things in the economy). The effects of changing the land type itself is not accounted for. For instance, if you convert a bunch of farmland to forest, that could reduce jobs in the long term, because it takes more farmers to maintain a square mile of farmland than it takes foresters to maintain a square mile of forest. On the other hand, if we assume there is more than enough farmland available to meet the demand for agricultural products (both domestic demand and exports), then converting some farmland to forest might not affect output, and hence would not affect jobs or GDP. It depends on whether farmland is the limiting resource in terms of agricultural output. If we want to capture macroeconomic impacts from changing land uses, we’d need to (1) determine whether land availability is a limiting factor on economic output for the agriculture industry, (2) define precisely which types of land are being converted to forest, so we can isolate the amount of converted farmland and (3) assign output intensity factors (e.g. financial output per unit land area) to each land type - at least to forests and farmland. The change in output would then be fed into the IO model to find change in jobs, GDP, and earnings.
I don’t see this as worthwhile right now, since I suspect land availability usually will not be the limiting factor on agricultural output, but it's something we might consider if it becomes important in some other geography that is land-constrained and where agriculture is important (maybe Indonesia?).
The EPS currently tracks the financial impacts of the physical implementation of the land use policies, like afforestation/reforestation (i.e. spending on the afforestation/reforestation effort, and the associated reduction in spending on other things in the economy). The effects of changing the land type itself is not accounted for. For instance, if you convert a bunch of farmland to forest, that could reduce jobs in the long term, because it takes more farmers to maintain a square mile of farmland than it takes foresters to maintain a square mile of forest. On the other hand, if we assume there is more than enough farmland available to meet the demand for agricultural products (both domestic demand and exports), then converting some farmland to forest might not affect output, and hence would not affect jobs or GDP. It depends on whether farmland is the limiting resource in terms of agricultural output. If we want to capture macroeconomic impacts from changing land uses, we’d need to (1) determine whether land availability is a limiting factor on economic output for the agriculture industry, (2) define precisely which types of land are being converted to forest, so we can isolate the amount of converted farmland and (3) assign output intensity factors (e.g. financial output per unit land area) to each land type - at least to forests and farmland. The change in output would then be fed into the IO model to find change in jobs, GDP, and earnings.
I don’t see this as worthwhile right now, since I suspect land availability usually will not be the limiting factor on agricultural output, but it's something we might consider if it becomes important in some other geography that is land-constrained and where agriculture is important (maybe Indonesia?).