Abstract: Global demand for ecosystem services like food and clean water is increas-ing, and it is crucial to economically value these services for the purposes of environ-mental conservation, land-use planning, and the implementation of green taxes. Fo-cusing on a monoculture wheat agroecosystem, the economic value of ecosystem ser-vices and environmental damage from different farm management types is here com-pared with natural ecosystems in a semi-arid region in Iran during the 2019–2020 ag-ricultural year. Using field survey data collected from 203 wheat farms with varying management practices, we estimated the economic value of six ecosystem services, along with three environmental damages. The net value of provisioning/regulating services less environmental disservices in wheat agroecosystems was highest for farms with a conservation management system, followed (in rank order) by intensive, tradi-tional, organic, and industrial management types. Wheat agroecosystems recorded net values of 41.94% to 66.92% below those of natural ecosystems in the region. The find-ings show that converting natural ecosystems into wheat agroecosystems increases the value of provisioning services (food and forage) but also substantially increases envi-ronmental costs. These costs rose linearly with the value of increases in provisioning services.
