Empowering practitioners working at the agriculture–conservation interface

Abstract

Growing global demand for food, fuel, and fiber has proliferated a suite of negative environmental externalities in some agricultural landscapes that conservation practices seek to resolve. But conservation adoption by private actors is often insufficient. Conservation practitioners facilitate adoption, but they often lack understanding of the agricultural production systems in which they work. We developed a professional development program to help conservation practitioners better understand farming and farmers to empower them to increase conservation adoption in one U.S. state with entrenched environmental challenges arising from agriculture. The curriculum combined instructional techniques, disciplinary experts, and farmers to explore the complexities of the agricultural system in which participants worked. Two cohorts of conservation practitioners (n = 20 and 23) working for 17 organizations participated in 20–21 sessions. Ninety-eight percent of participants agreed participation made them better conservation practitioners. Significant majorities reported increased knowledge about agriculture (100%), conservation (85%), private land decision making (90%), and behavior change (95%). Participants increased empathy toward farmers (+24.9%), increased communication self-efficacy (+15.3%), and improved intention to apply behavior change principles (+49.4%). Comparable professional development interventions may be implemented in similar contexts to foster greater conservation adoption and ultimately reduce entrenched negative environmental externalities.