SWCS view

Excerpt

The refrain of “educate them” is often heard in conservation circles. Some times it means we need to educate farmers, sometimes it means we need to educate the public about the progress that farmers have made, and sometimes it is directed at Congress and other legislative bodies. In each of these contexts, “educate them” tends to mean “pound certain information into their heads.” This method of involuntary acquisition of knowledge works in a few situations, such as a military boot camp or an English boarding school, where the person doing the educating has a big stick.

But conservation has never had a big stick. Programs in the U.S., such as cost sharing for terrace construction have consistently had more funding requests than there was money to go around. Even the Food Security Acts enforcement provisions will lose their sting if commodity prices rise and farmers choose the market price, not the subsidized price.

To be successful in educating people about conservation, we need to put matters on their terms and in their culture …