Professor Alan Barrett:

One of my earliest introductions to the notion that economics did not answer everything was 15 years or more ago when I did a study on forestry subsidies. The specific question in the research was whether forestry subsidies had an impact on land prices. The issue still exists. As I started looking into it, the generosity of the grant schemes in place to encourage people to engage in forestry was constantly explained to me and as a very naïve economist I could not understand why the take-up was not stronger. Luckily, I am married to somebody from the west of Ireland and I was able to ask my brother-in-law, who is a farmer there. He told me he would not go into forestry because he would not have anything to talk about in the pub on a Saturday night. It was a lovely simple illustration that there are activities in farming to which people are attached. I use this as an example that we are cognisant of the fact that often it is not just a straightforward incentive. People like doing certain things with their farmland. Dr. Curtis knows much more about this than I do.