ABSTRACT:
In the fall of 1989, 415 producers at five midwestern sites were interviewed about their attitudes toward the U.S. Department of Agriculture's soil conservation program called “conservation compliance.” All respondents had land subject to this program. Conducted just before the formal beginning of the program's phase in which producers apply approved conservation plans, the survey found attitudes that were conducive to the implementation of the required plans. The producers tended (a) to expect the plans to be tolerable in their financial risks and their demands for labor and other inputs, (b) to be aware of the disincentives to noncompliance, and (c) to assign a relatively high probability to violations being detected and leading to loss of eligibility for farm program benefits. However, the limited amount of field-level monitoring that USDA apparently is scheduling may cause farmers to revise downward their estimates of the likelihood of noncompliance being discovered. Because many producers at the five sites are expected to request plan revisions, the continuation of the widespread perception of plans being fair will depend, at least in part, on the standards USDA applies when considering revisions.
Footnotes
J. Dixon Esseks is a professor in the Division of Public Administration, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, 60115-2887, and Steven E. Kraft is a professor in the Department of Agribusiness Economics, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 62901. The survey on which this paper Is based was made possible by a grant from the Joyce Foundation.
- Copyright 1991 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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