Food Marketing Services


Posted by Admin

Food Marketing Services

Food Marketing Services

Long skewed heavily in favor of “provisioning” ecosystem services like timber, fuel, food crops, and irrigation water, markets are beginning to change. In recent decades, they have begun focusing on what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) calls “supporting” and “regulating” services, which are not as tangible but support ecosystem health.

Two Examples of Markets that Value Supporting and Regulating Ecosystem Services

Federal regulations have recognized the value of some ecosystems and their services for at least the past 40 years, resulting in a number of different modes of establishing their market value. Wetland mitigation banks established in response to federal "no net loss" of wetlands policies are one such example. The pollution permitting system established by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce acid rain is another.

Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers currently require that "unavoidable" loss of wetland acreage and function be mitigated by protecting, restoring, or even creating wetlands. The market has responded by creating nonprofit and commercial mitigation banks with the sole purpose of selling credits in wetlands that will be protected and managed in perpetuity.