Conservation intensification under risk: An assessment of adoption, additionality, and farmer preferences

Abstract

Conservation practices used on agricultural cropland can provide important ecosystem services. The United States relies largely on voluntary programs to incentivize adoption of conservation practices, but the success of these efforts relies on good program design. We use a choice experiment to evaluate farmers' willingness to adopt more intensive in-field conservation practices (continuous no-till, conservation crop rotation, cover crops, and variable rate application of inputs) using a nonlinear extended expected utility framework that incorporates risk under a conservation contract. We contribute to the literature by providing insights regarding producers' preference for incentive payment mechanism (federal program or carbon market) and the incentive payment needed to induce additionality and practice continuity. We find that although an additional payment might be needed to promote practice continuity among farmers who have previously adopted cover crops, in the case of continuous no-till, adopters might be willing to forgo additional payment to continue benefiting from the use of this practice. Our results also revealed producers prefer conservation contracts accruing higher off-farm environmental benefits and federally administered over carbon market programs. This is an important result given an increased public interest in climate change and new proposed carbon mitigation policies and private carbon market initiatives.