Individual and county-level factors influence farmers’ use of 4R Plus nutrient management practices

Keywords: Agriculture, Hierarchical Modeling, Conservation, Environmental Stewardship, Iowa
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 56

Abstract

As nutrient management is of crucial importance for global sustainable food systems, adopting 4R Plus approach to nutrient management can lead to win-win outcomes boosting profitability and minimizing the environmental impacts of farming. Despite major support by industry and conservation organizations, the adoption of this framework is below the expectation. Using data from a survey of 6,006 U.S. Midwest farmers, we employ Multi-Level Modeling to capture the complex relationship between diverse individual- and county-level social, economic, and ecological factors and the adoption of 4R Plus practices. Findings suggested the individual-level factor crop acres was consistently and positively associated with predicting all five 4R Plus practices. Similarly, farmers’ perceived lack of agronomic capacity was significantly and negatively associated with all but Right Source of 4R Plus practices. At the county level, farmers with higher percent rented land were less likely to adopt Right Time, Right Source, and Edge-of-Field practices. As anticipated, results also showed that topography was a significant predictor, with a greater average slope strongly associated with soil-conserving Plus practices. The results indicating that crop insurance may act as a deterrent to the adoption of the 4R Plus practices has major policy implications, pointing to a pressing need to integrate crop insurance and conservation policies, so they work together to achieve sustainable risk management. Our results point to potentially necessary changes in crop insurance and conservation policies and outreach campaign informed by the socioeconomic and ecological systems for broad adoption of 4R Plus approach.