America’s farmers rely on a host of practices such as cover cropping and crop rotation to maintain soil health, grow more productive crops and feed the U.S. and countries around the world. However, current research is too sparse to precisely demonstrate how these practices can actually affect the yields and bottom lines for farmers.
Agricultural lenders and crop insurers do not currently offer incentives for farmers who incorporate these practices to improve soil health because they have no research-based economic rationale for doing so, according to Frederi Viens , a professor in the Department of Statistics at Rice University. Meanwhile, he said there is ample evidence that the federal crop insurance program indirectly provides strong incentives to continue practices that are damaging to soil health.
Viens said this misalignment of incentives is a missed opportunity for all parties involved, and it’s one of the reasons he has taken the role of lead statistician on a multi-year, multi-institution research project supported by grants from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute for Food and Agriculture and from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research in partnership with the public advocacy nonprofit organization Land Core.
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