Modeling No-Till Adoption by Corn and Soybean Producers: Insights Into Sustained Adoption

Abstract

Abstract.No-till acreage has increased in recent years, but many farmers alternate no-till with other tillage practices, limiting public and private benefits from sustained no-till adoption. Revealed preference data are used in an ordered logit regression analysis to determine the effect of soil characteristics, climate, regions, farm characteristics, and producer demographics on producers' choices to use continuous tillage, alternate no-till systems with tillage systems, or continuously use no-till. The model provides insight into the characteristics and conditions that are conducive to each tillage regime. The attributes found to significantly affect continuous no-till use are erodibility classification, drainage, farm size, and climate.

Satellites reveal a small positive yield effect from conservation tillage across the US Corn Belt

“…This is consistent with past difficulties identifying universal variables to explain adoption [71,72]. Field slope ranked highest in importance (table 1), likely explained by greater benefits for erosion relative to flatter fields and policies targeting highly erodible areas [18]. Higher early season temperature, early season precipitation, and July vapor pressure deficits also increased probability of adoption ( figure 1(b), table 1), consistent with findings that conservation tillage is often more prominent in warmer, arid conditions [16,17,73] and can enhance water infiltration rates [1].…”

“…Socioeconomic factors for which we lacked data can influence adoption, and, if also associated with higher yields, they could cause omitted variable bias in our propensity score and treatment effect estimation. For example, farm size, education, high sales farms, and regulations for highly erodible lands have been positively correlated to conservation tillage adoption [18,32,[67][68][69][70]. Negative correlations exist for farmer age, management by renters, and distance from research stations [32,68,69].…”

“…This suggests that management challenges persist for conservation tillage, likely related to weed control or timing of planting. Indeed, a previous analysis found that in the US circa 2012, less than half of farmers reporting 'notill' methods practiced them continuously during the previous four years [18]. Because soil benefits are greatest under sustained conservation tillage, there is still a need for improved understanding of these management decisions and challenges.…”

“…Because soil degradation typically operates on century timescales, near-term yield impacts and profitability are key factors for farmer adoption [17,18]. Numerous studies have examined the yield effects of conservation tillage, and their results are mixed.…”

The Roles of Adoption and Behavior Change in Agricultural Policy

“…Likewise, the degree of improvement in stream water quality depends on the scale (extent) of adoption (e.g., Roberts et al 2012) 1 . The literature suggests that partial adoption may have many causes, including variation in which crop is grown over time (e.g., in a corn-soybean rotation, no-till is more likely to be used in soybean (Wade, Kurkalova, and Secchi 2016;Tran and Kurkalova 2019)), heterogeneity in land quality (Wade and Claassen 2017), variation in weather conditions (Ding, Schoengold, and Tadesse 2009), land tenure (Soule, Tegene, and Wiebe 2000), or limits on other resources (e.g. labor, water) that preclude whole-farm adoption (Doole, Bathgate, and Robertson 2009).…”