Excerpt
Our understanding of farm-level conservation behavior is weak. Study after study fails to provide a consistent explanation of why some farmers practice conservation and others do not (8). To be fair, many investigators have contributed to a better understanding of conservation behavior, especially aggregrate relationships (9): on some particular relationships, such as the roles of education, land values, interest rates, and subsidies, we have substantial consensus. But we do not have a comprehensive understanding of guiding principles at the farm level. Thus, we are not in a good position to prescribe the most cost-effective conservation programs over the next decade. This weakness in knowledge will severely test the conservation community, because taxpayer and environmentalist scrutiny will grow, and the private and public economics of conservation are shifting, perhaps dramatically.
Several powerful forces will change the farm level economics of soil and water conservation in the 1990s. First, continuing large government subsidies are unlikely, because of federal and state budget problems. Subsidies have been shown to be an important factor in increasing conservation behavior; the Conservation Reserve Program is a prime example of such a subsidy. Second …
Footnotes
David E. Ervin Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon State University (on assignment, U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment).
- Copyright 1994 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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