Liming is a common management practice, but there exists uncertainty about the economic benefits. An economic analysis of the costs and profitability of liming arable crops was undertaken using data from the long-term liming experiment at Rothamsted and Woburn. There was a strong liming effect on gross margins, but large differences in the economic benefit between crops. For some crops (such as spring barley), liming greatly improved the gross margin, while for spring oats liming provided very little increase. Most economic benefit was achieved with the high lime treatment, but the cumulative discounted cash flow indicated that it took approximately 20 years before a distinct difference developed between the lime treatments. Therefore, lime should be considered a capital investment and economic evaluation undertaken over a long period. Liming rate increased the net present value expressed as an annual equivalent (NPVa). An additional £436 ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ at Rothamsted and £208 ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ at Woburn of profit was gained from the adoption of the most profitable liming treatments over not liming. Sensitivity analysis indicated that total liming costs had a weak effect on NPVa, but crop price had a strong effect. The economic performance of liming differed between sites and was higher at Rothamsted than at Woburn, mostly because of soil differences. Liming greatly improves economic returns of most arable crops, but the magnitude of the long-term economic benefit depends upon the sequence of crops within a given rotation.

中文翻译：

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在可耕作作物轮作中撒石灰的经济学：Rothamsted和Woburn历时35年的撒石灰实验分析

撒石灰是一种常见的管理方法，但是其经济效益存在不确定性。使用Rothamsted和Woburn的长期石灰试验的数据对可耕作作物的成本和收益进行了经济分析。对毛利率的影响很大，但农作物之间的经济利益差异很大。对于某些农作物（例如大麦春），撒石灰大大提高了毛利率，而对于春燕麦，撒石灰的增加很少。高石灰处理可带来最大的经济效益，但累积的贴现现金流量表明，石灰处理之间出现明显差异需要大约20年的时间。因此，应将石灰视为长期进行的资本投资和经济评估。NPVa）。Rothamsted的另外436公顷- ¹ 年^-1和Woburn的208公顷- ¹ 年^-1的收益是通过采用最有利的石灰处理而不是不进行石灰处理而获得的。敏感性分析表明，总限制成本对NPVa的影响较弱，而农作物价格对NPVa的影响较大。石灰在不同地点之间的经济表现各不相同，在Rothamsted高于在Woburn，主要是由于土壤差异。撒石灰极大地提高了大多数可耕作作物的经济收益，但是长期经济利益的大小取决于给定轮作内作物的序列。