Abstract:
Agricultural policy is becoming increasingly influenced by environmental policy, but
achieving environmental objectives through government conservation programs remains
an elusive goal. Numerous studies have shown that farmers are motivated to adopt
conservation practices not only by profit incentives, but also by factors such as
perceptions of good stewardship and attachment to the land. In this analysis, I use
innovation-adoption theory to analyze case studies of crop farmers in the Lower Roanoke
watershed in North Carolina to show how they are influenced by micro-level dynamics at
the farm scale. Using this theory, I explain how farmer perceptions of conservation
practices can both encourage and discourage them to adopt these practices. This analysis
shows that practices that provide a perceived relative advantage, through things like labor
and time savings, are more readily adopted, but practices that are perceived as
incompatible with farmers’ values, needs, or relationships with landowners are frequently
rejected, even when economic profits might be derived from them. I also found that
farmers are strongly influenced by biophysical aspects of their farm operation and have
varying, but influential, interpretations of what good stewardship looks like. Based on
these findings, I suggest that conservation programs could be marketed in a more
effective way by appealing to farmers’ motivations and by communicating conservation
benefits in ways that take farmer perceptions into account. In particular, conservation
programs should be framed in a way that educates farmers about how conservation can
benefit the quality of their land, crop yields, and agroecosystem.
