Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 13.3
. Michigan corn-soybean farmer ratings of the importance of the environmen-
tal benefits “to me” minus importance of the benefits “to society,” in 2008 (n=1443). Error
bars = 2 standard errors based on paired difference t-test. Negative values imply the service
was rated more important “to me” than “to society”; positive values indicate the converse.
Redrawn from Robertson et al. (2014).
Both survey respondents and focus group participants expressed familiarity with
the management practices presented in the questionnaire, so knowledge of the prac-
tices was present. Those practices that they had adopted, or were willing to adopt,
were ones that offered clear private benefits. Conservation tillage practices are a
case in point. Reduced tillage was adopted by 82% of Michigan corn and soybean
farmers surveyed, with 65% adopting no-till in some years. According to Sandretto
and Payne (2006), reduced tillage lowers expenses for labor, fuel, and equipment
and may improve yields. Among the four MCSE annual crop systems, reduced
tillage is represented both by the Conventional chisel-till system and by the No-till
system, the latter being both the most profitable (Swinton et al. 2015, Chapter 3 in
this volume) and the provider of lowest greenhouse gas emissions (Gelfand and
Robertson 2015, Chapter 12 in this volume). So conservation tillage appears to
offer farmers private profitability benefits at the same time that it provides benefi-
cial environmental externalities.
Most of the farmers surveyed and interviewed reported that environmental
traits of the potential cropping systems were secondary to profitability traits. This
ranking explains farmers' reluctance to reduce herbicide use by using more costly
mechanical weed control or to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use by substituting more
costly winter cover crops—patterns that are also evident at the national scale.
Even when farmers desire to adopt environmental technologies, barriers can
impede them from doing so. Of the technologies evaluated in the 2008 Crop
Management and Environmental Stewardship Survey, reduced tillage, especially
no-till, has the greatest capital requirements because it requires special equipment.
