Evaluating Conservation Programs

Winter cover crops are plants used to protect soils during the period between the harvest and establishment of cash crops such as corn and soybeans, effectively providing farm fields with perennial cover. The total cost of cover crops varies considerably from site to site and year to year, yet the single costliest aspect of using cover crops is the cost of seed. Seed cost also tends to be the most volatile component of the cost of cover crop use, subject to complex supply dynamics associated with producing viable seed, storage capacity, and unpredictable regional demand. We conducted a survey of seed dealers who sell cover crop seeds using the state of Indiana as a case study. The majority of the respondents believe that sales for cover crop seeds over the next five years in Indiana will increase. In response to this expected increased demand, seed dealers noted they intend to (in no particular order): increase contracted cover crop seed production and invest in seed handling and storage capacity; increase direct interaction with farmers; become more active with workshops and demonstration field days; and/or create marketing materials that specifically promote the soil health benefits of cover crops. The top three factors seed dealers believed would improve the Indiana cover crop seed market the most were: (1) financial incentives for cover crop use; (2) improved customer knowledge of cover crop management; and tied for (3) reduced seed production costs, and broader support of cover crop usage from commodity groups. The top three topics of publicly funded research most useful to the cover crop industry were: (1) understanding factors that influence farmer cover crop adoption; (2) cover crop impact on field profitability; and (3) understanding long-term soil benefits of cover crops. Seed dealers play a unique role in conservation practices such as cover crops, not just because they are often trusted facilitators of information and guidance, but also because their business actions strongly influence available conservation opportunities, management options, and direct cost to farmers. The respondents to the survey offered their opinions regarding a number of issues that would help their business viability in a sustainable way while promoting farmer adoption of cover crops and their long-term commitment to the practice.

The economic expansion and population growth that have continued for almost a decade in many rural communities of the West are posing a new set of wildlife conservation issues for the region. Unlike economic development in the past, this expansion is not associated with the traditional economic base, but instead is tied to services sectors and wildlife amenities of the region.

We begin with a brief comparison of the size distribution of US and EU-15 farms to provide the European audience a greater context to the US issues. The EU data are from the Farm Structures Survey and the US data are from USDA’s Agriculture Resource Management Survey (ARMS). We next address the reasons for the unexpected increase in the number of small farms in the US and the possible role of government policies. We draw on ARMS to provide the distribution of commodity and conservation payments by farm size. Although limits on payments to large farms have long been addressed by the periodic US Farm Acts, payments continue to be concentrated on large farms largely because of their historical ties to farm production. The most recent 2008 Farm Act included more provisions to target program participants based on the personal characteristics of the operators and to limit payments to individuals likely to be operating large farms.

Vast, dry, and flat. The Great Plains of the continental US stretch from the foot of the Rockies through to the grasslands by the Mississippi, as far north as Canada and as far south as Texas. Covering 1.3 million square kilometres (a size roughly equivalent to Peru), it is renowned for being an immense expanse of farms and paddocks, with a tree, a creek or a town thrown in for variety every so often. Disciplines Agricultural Economics | Agriculture | Environmental Sciences | Natural Resources Management and Policy Comments This article is published as David A Hennessy, Hongli Feng, Mike Wimberly, Tong Wang, Adnan Akyüz, Peter Wolter, Larry Janssen. The Farmer and the Rancher. scientia.global (2017). doi: 10.26320/SCIENTIA11 . Posted with permission. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Authors David A. Hennessy, Hongli Feng, Mike Wimberly, Tong Wang, Adnan Akyüz, Peter Wolter, and Larry Janssen This article is...

To improve the economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture, information is needed on how to target research, teaching, and outreach programs. However, conducting survey research in general, and with agricultural producers specifically, is increasingly challenging given issues such as declining response rates and limited resources. While studies examining the best practices for promoting higher response rates exist, few focus explicitly on agricultural producers. In three separate surveys conducted with agricultural producers in South Dakota in 2018 and 2019, we included experiments testing how token pre-incentives, a research partnership, and response mode options impacted response rates. We also examined how sample source and email augmentations influence survey responses. The study findings indicate that providing pre-incentives and multiple simultaneous response options can increase response rates with agricultural producers. On the other hand, email augmentation to mail surveys, sample source, and identification of select institutional research partnerships appear to have minimal effects.

Vast, dry, and flat. The Great Plains of the continental US stretch from the foot of the Rockies through to the grasslands by the Mississippi, as far north as Canada and as far south as Texas. Covering 1.3 million square kilometres (a size roughly equivalent to Peru), it is renowned for being an immense expanse of farms and paddocks, with a tree, a creek or a town thrown in for variety every so often. Disciplines Agricultural Economics | Agriculture | Environmental Sciences | Natural Resources Management and Policy Comments This article is published as David A Hennessy, Hongli Feng, Mike Wimberly, Tong Wang, Adnan Akyüz, Peter Wolter, Larry Janssen. The Farmer and the Rancher. scientia.global (2017). doi: 10.26320/SCIENTIA11 . Posted with permission. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License Authors David A. Hennessy, Hongli Feng, Mike Wimberly, Tong Wang, Adnan Akyüz, Peter Wolter, and Larry Janssen This article is...

The purpose of this study was to gauge the impact of agriculture and energy policies on conservation practices through a survey of conservation reserve program (CRP) contract holders in a selected Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota-Burleigh, Kidder, and Stutsman Counties. The survey results showed that 48% of respondents are considering returning CRP acres to annual crop production once the contract expires. The largest influence on post-CRP land use was the market prices for production of annual crops. Respondents also identified lack of knowledge of conservation programs as a large hurdle to participation. This may indicate a need for improved communication from program information sources such as the Farm Service Agency and the Natural Resource Conservation Service, from where most contract holders get their information. These findings also provide interesting insight into the motivation and decision-making process surrounding conservation programs, in particular continued pa...

Beliefs and attitudes are a critical component of future behaviors yet remain underexamined when assessing the intentions of agricultural producers to implement conservation practices. We examined the antecedents to agricultural behavior through qualitative interviews analyzed with consensual qualitative research (Hill, Thompson, & Nutt Williams, 1997) methodology. The results indicated complex relationships between stewardship beliefs and economic factors, as well as influences related to science and technology, weather and climate, and threats to family farm identity. Analyzing the findings using tenets of the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), we present implications for interventions with agricultural producers as well as psychological theory and research, and suggest that farmers and ranchers value the land in important ways that extend beyond economic considerations.

Research Paper ----------
The monarch butterfly is a remarkable creature. Although the monarch itself is not threatened or endangered, the popularity of the monarch butterfly has drawn attention to its dwindling habitat before the species itself becomes jeopardized (United States Forest Service, 2008, Pg. 35). Due to the threats to the wide variety of habitats that monarch butterflies require to survive, coupled with public fascination of their yearly migration, it is the migration that has become “an endangered biological phenomenon (United States Forest Service, 2008, Pg. 10)”. Discussed here are the goals of the North American Monarch Conservation Plan, challenges facing the conservation of the monarch’s habitat, and an evaluation of the plan’s potential effectiveness.

Grasslands are one of the most imperiled ecosystems in the world and the majority of the grassland ecosystem in the United States (U.S.) is privately owned and used for agriculture. Conversion of grasslands to row crops is expanding, fueled by commodity price increases, technological improvements, and agricultural policy. The U.S. state and federal governments and many nongovernmental conservation organizations primarily use voluntary incentive-based conservation programs to address the environmental impacts of agriculture and encourage conservation on private land. To investigate the utility of these programs to conserve grasslands, we surveyed private landowners in the Plains and Prairie Potholes Ecoregion (PPPE), one of America’s most at-risk grassland areas, about their land use, environmental attitudes and values, and reasons for or against participating in a Farm Bill Conservation Program (FBCP). Agricultural landowners with large land holdings, who value hunting, and have positive environmental values, attitudes, and behaviors, were more likely to participate in an FBCP. However, FBCP participants reported having a smaller proportion of their land in grass than nonparticipants (29% vs. 35%). Additionally, a higher percentage of FBCP participants, compared to nonparticipants, reported converting grassland to crops (26% vs. 15%) and removing wetlands (20% vs. 15%). Financial considerations and a desire for autonomy limited participation. These findings signal the need for additional research and tools other than FBCPs to conserve the PPPE grasslands.