Linda Stalker Prokopy

Determinants of agricultural best management practice adoption: Evidence from the literature

This article reviews 25 years of literature focused on the adoption of agricultural best management practices (BMPs) in the United States to examine general trends in the categories of capacity, awareness, attitudes and farm characteristics. The study uses a vote count methodology and counts every instance of positive, negative and insignificant relationships in 55 studies. Education levels, capital, income, farm size, access to information, positive environmental attitudes, environmental awareness, and utilization of social networks emerge as some of the variables that are more often positively, rather than negatively, associated with adoption rates. The type of statistical analysis used in the studies has a negligible effect on the results. When different types of BMPs are examined in similar groupings, the aggregated findings generally hold true. The study concludes that farmer adoption rates can be improved by focusing on the generally consistent determinants of agricultural BMP adoption. This paper also highlights future areas of research that are needed including a focus on the determinants of adoption of water and livestock management BMPs and more study of the role of tenure and farm proximity to a river or stream.

Why farmers adopt best management practice in the United States: A meta-analysis of the adoption literature

This meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies assesses factors believed to influence adoption of agricultural Best Management Practices in the United States. Using an established statistical technique to summarize the adoption literature in the United States, we identified the following variables as having the largest impact on adoption: access to and quality of information, financial capacity, and being connected to agency or local networks of farmers or watershed groups. This study shows that various approaches to data collection affect the results and comparability of adoption studies. In particular, environmental awareness and farmer attitudes have been inconsistently used and measured across the literature. This meta-analysis concludes with suggestions regarding the future direction of adoption studies, along with guidelines for how data should be presented to enhance the adoption of conservation practices and guide research.

Farmer Participation in U.S. Farm Bill Conservation Programs

AbstractConservation policy in agricultural systems in the United States relies primarily on voluntary action by farmers. Federal conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, offer incentives, both financial and technical, to farmers in exchange for adoption of conservation practices. Understanding motivations for (as well as barriers to) participation in voluntary programs is important for the design of future policy and effective outreach. While a significant literature has explored motivations and barriers to conservation practice adoption and participation in single programs, few studies in the U.S. context have explored general participation by farmers in one place and time. A mixed-methods research approach was utilized to explore farmer participation in all U.S. Farm Bill programs in Indiana. Current and past program engagement was high, with nearly half of survey respondents reporting participation in at least one program. Most participants had experience with the Conservation Reserve Program, with much lower participation rates in other programs. Most interview participants who had experience in programs were motivated by the environmental benefits of practices, with incentives primarily serving to reduce the financial and technical barriers to practice adoption. The current policy arrangement, which offers multiple policy approaches to conservation, offers farmers with different needs and motivations a menu of options. However, evidence suggests that the complexity of the system may be a barrier that prevents participation by farmers with scarce time or resources. Outreach efforts should focus on increasing awareness of program options, while future policy must balance flexibility of programs with complexity.

It's Who You Know: Social Capital, Social Networks, and Watershed Groups

Social capital, usually conceptualized as trusting relationships among members of a group, is often discussed as playing an important role in watershed groups. This study is grounded in the social networks conceptualization of social capital and seeks to identify how access to social resources aids in achieving watershed group outcomes. Three comparative cases along a rural–urban continuum in the Midwest were studied using qualitative in-depth interviews (n = 38) and meeting observation. The major finding of this research is that purposive selection of watershed-group participants to provide the greatest access to human capital and social network ties aids watershed groups in achieving outcomes. Guidance provided by state agencies to newly formed watershed groups should include suggestions for what types of network ties might be most beneficial for different objectives and how such ties can be sought out.

More food, low pollution (mo fo lo Po): a grand challenge for the 21st century.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has been a double-edged sword, greatly improving human nutrition during the 20th century but also posing major human health and environmental challenges for the 21st century. In August 2013, about 160 agronomists, scientists, extension agents, crop advisors, economists, social scientists, farmers, representatives of regulatory agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other agricultural experts gathered to discuss the vexing challenge of how to produce more food to nourish a growing population while minimizing pollution to the environment. This collection of 14 papers authored by conference participants provides a much needed analysis of the many technical, economic, and social impediments to improving nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) in crop and animal production systems. These papers demonstrate that the goals of producing more food with low pollution (Mo Fo Lo Po) will not be achieved by technological developments alone but will also require policies that recognize the economic and social factors affecting farmer decision-making. Take-home lessons from this extraordinary interdisciplinary effort include the need (i) to develop partnerships among private and public sectors to demonstrate the most current, economically feasible, best management NUE practices at local and regional scales; (ii) to improve continuing education to private sector retailers and crop advisers; (iii) to tie nutrient management to performance-based indicators on the farm and in the downwind and downstream environment; and (iv) to restore investments in research, education, extension, and human resources that are essential for developing the interdisciplinary knowledge and innovative skills needed to achieve agricultural sustainability goals.

Lessons Learned in Developing Social Indicators for Regional Water Quality Management

This article outlines a process for developing social indicators for regional resource management programs. Insights and lessons are drawn from experience developing indicators for the social dimensions of water quality programs addressing non-point-source pollution. The project driving these insights originated with a charge from regional leaders of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) water quality program to a project team comprised of participants from land grant universities within the region. We believe the indicator development process from that experience could be applied in other regions to address a variety of resource management issues. Key lessons learned through this process include the value of building stakeholder capacity for using social data, the importance of developing a conceptual framework to guide indicator selection, and the importance of selecting a small set of core indicators.

Extension′s role in disseminating information about climate change to agricultural stakeholders in the United States

The U.S. Cooperative Extension Service was created 100 years ago to serve as a boundary or interface organization between science generated at the nation′s land grant universities and rural communities. Production agriculture in the US is becoming increasingly complex and challenging in the face of a rapidly changing climate and the need to balance growing crop productivity with environmental protection. Simultaneously, extension budgets are diminishing and extension personnel are stretched thin with numerous, diverse stakeholders and decreasing budgets. Evidence from surveys of farmers suggests that they are more likely to go to private retailers and consultants for information than extension. This paper explores the role that extension can play in facilitating climate change adaptation in agriculture using data from a survey of agricultural advisors in Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska and a survey of extension educators in the 12 state North Central Region. Evidence from these surveys shows that a majority of extension educators believe that climate change is happening and that they should help farmers prepare. It also shows that private agricultural advisors trust extension as a source of information about climate change. This suggests that extension needs to continue to foster its relationship with private information providers because working through them will be the best way to ultimately reach farmers with climate change information. However extension educators must be better informed and trained about climate change; university specialists and researchers can play a critical role in this training process.

Farmers and Climate Change: A Cross-National Comparison of Beliefs and Risk Perceptions in High-Income Countries

Climate change has serious implications for the agricultural industry—both in terms of the need to adapt to a changing climate and to modify practices to mitigate for the impacts of climate change. In high-income countries where farming tends to be very intensive and large scale, it is important to understand farmers’ beliefs and concerns about climate change in order to develop appropriate policies and communication strategies. Looking across six study sites—Scotland, Midwestern United States, California, Australia, and two locations in New Zealand—this paper finds that over half of farmers in each location believe that climate change is occurring. However, there is a wide range of beliefs regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change; only in Australia do a majority of farmers believe that climate change is anthropogenic. In all locations, a majority of farmers believe that climate change is not a threat to local agriculture. The different policy contexts and existing impacts from climate change are discussed as possible reasons for the variation in beliefs. This study compared varying surveys from the different locations and concludes that survey research on farmers and climate change in diverse locations should strive to include common questions to facilitate comparisons.

Evaluating the Role of Postconstruction Support in Sustaining Drinking Water Projects Evidence from Peru

This article assesses the impact of postconstruction support (PCS) on the sustainability of participatory, demand-driven rural water projects in the Cuzco region of Peru. This study evaluates ninety-nine villages from two water supply schemes— projects built under a social investment fund program and those built under a nongovernmental program funded by the Swiss government. Overall, the study finds that the projects are performing very well. Multivariate regression analysis suggests that household- and village-level PCS is linked with financial performance, overall household satisfaction, and attitudes toward long-term future performance after controlling for project and community determinants of sustainability.

The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

The existence of anthropogenic climate change remains a public controversy despite the consensus among climate scientists. The controversy may be fed by the existence of scientists from other disciplines publicly casting doubt on the validity of climate science. The extent to which non-climate scientists are skeptical of climate science has not been studied via direct survey. Here we report on a survey of biophysical scientists across disciplines at universities in the Big 10 Conference. Most respondents (93.6%) believe that mean temperatures have risen and most (91.9%) believe in an anthropogenic contribution to rising temperatures. Respondents strongly believe that climate science is credible (mean credibility score 6.67/7). Those who disagree about climate change disagree over basic facts (e.g., the effects of CO2 on climate) and have different cultural and political values. These results suggest that scientists who are climate change skeptics are outliers and that the majority of scientists surveyed believe in anthropogenic climate change and that climate science is credible and mature.