Scaling up to address new challenges to conservation on US farmland

Stuart, Diana; Gillon, Sean

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.07.003

Cited by 77 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Incentivizing on-farm research and collaborative arrangements among farmers will be increasingly important. Our finding of higher levels of concern for water quality at drainage district and watershed scales suggests that scaling up, or connecting individual and local efforts to meso-or macro-scale policies, programs, and strategies as advocated by Stuart and Gillon (2013) to mitigate collective vulnerabilities and contextualize policies in terms of economic and political realities, is essential.…”

Section: Biophysical and Social Science Results Inform Policy Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Studies consistently highlight factors beyond finances as influencing farm practices, including family and social issues, skill and knowledge, attitudinal intensions, and interconnections and complexity in the farm context to design appropriate policies (Battershill and Gilg, 1997;Maloney and Paolisso, 2006). Scaling up or connecting local issues with meso-and macro-level factors and change drivers is advocated to situate individual farm producers in broader economic and political contexts for more effective policies and vulnerability mitigation than offered by individual producer-oriented programs and regulations (Stuart and Gillon, 2013). Our work builds on these ideas by assessing the empirical conditions related to individual farmers, farms, and small watersheds and connecting these findings to the broader context of policy and strategy at larger scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Navigating the Socio-Bio-Geo-Chemistry and Engineering of Nitrogen Management in Two Illinois Tile-Drained Watersheds

et al. 2015

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Reducing nitrate loads from corn and soybean, tile-drained, agricultural production systems in the Upper Mississippi River basin is a major challenge that has not been met. We evaluated a range of possible management practices from biophysical and social science perspectives that could reduce nitrate losses from tile-drained fields in the Upper Salt Fork and Embarras River watersheds of east-central Illinois. Long-term water quality monitoring on these watersheds showed that nitrate losses averaged 30.6 and 23.0 kg nitrate N ha -1 yr -1 (Embarras and Upper Salt Fork watersheds, respectively), with maximum nitrate concentrations between 14 and 18 mg N L -1 . With a series of on-farm studies, we conducted tile monitoring to evaluate several possible nitrate reduction conservation practices. Fertilizer timing and cover crops reduced nitrate losses (30% reduction in a year with large nitrate losses), whereas drainage water management on one tile system demonstrated the problems with possible retrofit designs (water flowed laterally from the drainage water management tile to the free drainage system nearby). Tile woodchip bioreactors had good nitrate removal in 2012 (80% nitrate reduction), and wetlands had previously been shown to remove nitrate (45% reductions) in the Embarras watershed. Interviews and surveys indicated strong environmental concern and stewardship ethics among landowners and farmers, but the many financial and operational constraints that they operate under limited their willingness to adopt conservation practices that targeted nitrate reduction. Under the policy and production systems currently in place, large-scale reductions in nitrate losses from watersheds such as these in east-central Illinois will be difficult.

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Section: Biophysical and Social Science Results Inform Policy Decisionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating the Socio-Bio-Geo-Chemistry and Engineering of Nitrogen Management in Two Illinois Tile-Drained Watersheds

et al. 2015

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“…Unlike the popular micro-level research that focuses on the individual farmer, a macro-level study requires the aggregation of many decisions. To our knowledge, Stuart and Gillon [48] is one of the few macro-level studies of conservation practice adoption; they used California and Iowa as examples to emphasize of the importance of scaling up. Reimer et al [46] explored state-level decision-making using aggregated individual conservation decisions to estimate the factors influencing state-level Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) application decisions.…”

Section: Geographic Extentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Influencing Farmers’ Adoption of Best Management Practices: A Review and Synthesis

2018

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Best management practices (BMPs) for reducing agricultural non-point source pollution are widely available. However, agriculture remains a major global contributor to degradation of waters because farmers often do not adopt BMPs. To improve water quality, it is necessary to understand the factors that influence BMP adoption by farmers. We review the findings of BMP adoption studies from both developed and developing countries, published after (or otherwise not included in) two major literature reviews from 2007 and 2008. We summarize the study locations, scales, and BMPs studied; the analytical methods used; the factors evaluated; and the directionality of each factor's influence on BMP adoption. We then present a conceptual framework for BMP adoption decisions that emphasizes the importance of scale, the tailoring or targeting of information and incentives, and the importance of expected farm profits. We suggest that future research directions should focus on study scale, on measuring and modeling of adoption as a continuous process, and on incorporation of social norms and uncertainty into decision-making. More research is needed on uses of social media and market recognition approaches (such as certificate schemes and consumer labeling) to influence BMP adoption.

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“…Agricultural production comprises the dominant land use in many regions of the world, and management decisions applied to working lands may benefit or impair regional ecosystems. Although a conservation plan applied to one agricultural operation is unlikely to reverse regional declines in ecosystem health, the cumulative effect of coordinated stewardship across many farms can significantly improve regional environmental outcomes (Stuart and Gillon 2013). We recommend greater institutional and policy investment in stewardship networks as a mechanism for advancing regional agroecosystem sustainability.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

The Capacity-Building Stewardship Model: assessment of an agricultural network as a mechanism for improving regional agroecosystem sustainability

Duff¹,

Zedler²,

Barzen³

et al. 2017

E&S

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. 2017. The Capacity-Building Stewardship Model: assessment of an agricultural network as a mechanism for improving regional agroecosystem sustainability. Ecology and Society 22 (1) ABSTRACT. Working lands have potential to meet agricultural production targets while serving as reservoirs of biological diversity and as sources of ecological services. Yet agricultural policy creates disincentives for this integration of conservation and production goals. While necessary, the development of a policy context that promotes agroecosystem sustainability will take time, and successful implementation will depend on a receptive agricultural audience. As the demands placed on working lands grow, there is a need for regional support networks that build agricultural producers' capacity for land stewardship. We used a social-ecological system framework to illustrate the Healthy Grown Potato Program as an agricultural network case study. Our Capacity-Building Stewardship Model reflects a 20-year experience working in collaboration with potato growers certified under an ecolabel in Wisconsin, USA. The model applies an evolving, modular farm stewardship standard to the entire farm-croplands and noncroplands. The model demonstrates an effective process for facilitating communication and shared learning among program participants, including agricultural producers, university extension specialists, nonprofit conservation partners, and industry representatives. The limitation of the model in practice has been securing funding to support expansion of the program and to ensure that the ecolabel standard is responsive to changes in the social-ecological system. Despite this constraint, the Capacity-Building Stewardship Model reveals an important mechanism for building regional commitment to conservation, with agricultural producers in a leadership role as architects, adopters, and advocates for stewardship behavior. Our experience provides important insight for the application of agri-environment schemes on private lands. The durability of a conservation ethic on working farms is likely to be enhanced when networks engage and support producers in an ongoing stewardship dialogue. Stewardship networks provide a means for coordination of conservation practices across property boundaries; with sufficient enrollment, they can achieve the spatial scale necessary to enhance regional agroecosystem sustainability.

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Scaling up to address new challenges to conservation on US farmland

Cited by 77 publications

References 71 publications

Navigating the Socio-Bio-Geo-Chemistry and Engineering of Nitrogen Management in Two Illinois Tile-Drained Watersheds

Navigating the Socio-Bio-Geo-Chemistry and Engineering of Nitrogen Management in Two Illinois Tile-Drained Watersheds

Factors Influencing Farmers’ Adoption of Best Management Practices: A Review and Synthesis

The Capacity-Building Stewardship Model: assessment of an agricultural network as a mechanism for improving regional agroecosystem sustainability

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