Economics of conservation tillage in Iowa

C. Arden Pope; Shashanka Bhide; Earl O. Heady

ABSTRACT:

Conservation tillage systems, in a study using linear programming models, were shown to be economically viable methods of reducing soil erosion in Iowa. In cases where yields remained the same under conservation tillages-net returns to farming sometimes rose as a result of the switch from conventional tillage to conservation tillage. In cases where a reasonable reduction in yields was assumed under conservation tillage, soil erosion was still controlled most economically by conservation tillage systems.

Footnotes

C. Arden Pope III is an assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77843. Shashanka Bhide is a consulting economist with the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, India. Earl O. Heady is a Curtiss distinguished professor of agriculture and director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, 50011. Journal Paper No. J-10655 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa, Project 2500. The preparation of this document was aided financially by the Department of Soil Conservation through a grant to the Iowa Department of Environmental Quality from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.
Copyright 1983 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society

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