Department of Statistics, National Taipei University, 67 Section 3, Min-Sheng East Rd., Taipei 104, Taiwan, ROC.
Waste Manag. 2021 Feb 1;120:424-432. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2020.09.051. Epub 2020 Oct 29.
Agricultural waste can be recycled in different ways. Cost-effectiveness is important information for investment decision-making of enterprises and policy-making of government to choose a profitable way to recycle agricultural waste. Therefore, this paper aims to present a cost-benefit analysis to assess and compare the cost-effectiveness between feasible recycling methods, and further propose cost-effective ways for recycling agricultural waste in Taiwan. Three recycling types of agricultural wastes, namely, composting, biogas power generation and biomass fuel are selected for cost-benefit analysis based on related regulations and policy supports of agricultural waste management in Taiwan. Primary data collected by sampling surveys conducted in 2018 supplemented by secondary data from national statistics are used for this study. Study results show that all three recycling types of agricultural wastes discussed in this study are profitable under corresponding economic conditions in 2018 with benefit/cost ratio greater than 1 and positive net present value; as expected, the cost-effectiveness of agricultural waste recycling varies depending on the recycling types, composition of input materials, and economic scales. Mixing chicken manure with other agricultural wastes for composting and using rice straw to make biomass fuel rods are estimated to have higher cost-effectiveness; livestock farms with small farming scale have relatively low biogas energy recovery efficiency; the cost-effectiveness of biogas power generation highly depends on fixed-in tariffs (FITs). Results imply that policy support for establishing co-processing centers of agricultural waste and differentiated FITs would be good measures to stimulate recycling efficiency of agricultural waste in Taiwan.
农业废弃物可以通过不同的方式进行回收利用。对于企业的投资决策和政府的政策制定来说，成本效益是一个重要的信息，以选择一种有利可图的方式来回收农业废弃物。因此，本文旨在通过成本效益分析来评估和比较可行的回收方法的成本效益，并进一步提出台湾农业废弃物回收的有效方法。基于台湾农业废弃物管理的相关法规和政策支持，选择了三种农业废弃物的回收类型，即堆肥、沼气发电和生物质燃料，进行成本效益分析。本研究采用 2018 年抽样调查收集的原始数据，并辅以国家统计数据的二手数据。研究结果表明，在 2018 年相应的经济条件下，所有三种农业废弃物的回收类型都是盈利的，效益/成本比大于 1，净现值为正；预计农业废弃物回收的成本效益因回收类型、投入物的组成和经济规模而异。将鸡粪与其他农业废弃物混合进行堆肥，以及使用稻草制造生物质燃料棒，预计具有更高的成本效益；养殖规模较小的养殖场沼气能源回收效率相对较低；沼气发电的成本效益高度依赖固定上网电价（FITs）。结果表明，建立农业废弃物协同处理中心和差异化 FITs 的政策支持将是刺激台湾农业废弃物回收效率的有效措施。
