As public and private stakeholders increase support for farmers’ efforts to enhance soil and water conservation activities, understanding what motivates farmers to implement soil and water conservation practices was one of the aims of the 2015 Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll.
The poll asked farmers to consider the soil and water conservation practices that they had employed in their farm operation. They were then asked to rate how important each of more than 20 potential motivations had been in their decisions to incorporate conservation practices into their operations. Items were developed to examine multiple dimensions of three motivational categories: stewardship; policy, regulatory and economic; and social pressure.
The items in the stewardship category were the highest rated motivations, with better than 75 percent of respondents ranking as either important or very important the following: protecting the land for the next generation (81 percent); because it’s the right thing to do (80 percent); avoiding polluting streams, rivers and lakes (79 percent); and protecting investment in the land (77 percent). Maintaining or enhancing productivity (73 percent) and soil health (71 percent) also were strong motivational factors.
“The highest-rated motivations were those that have intergenerational and ethical dimensions,” said J. Gordon Arbuckle, associate professor of sociology and extension sociologist with Iowa State University. “Protecting and improving soil productivity and health, with the intention of passing the land on to the next generation, appears to be among the most important considerations that go into soil and water conservation decisions.”
Environmental concerns also play an important role, Arbuckle noted, with most farmers indicating that keeping nutrients and chemicals on the farm and out of waterways, and reducing the overall environmental impact of farming, were important or very important motivations.
Items in the policy, regulatory and economic category followed in importance as motivational factors. The highest rated item, at 57 percent important or very important, was “increasing long-term profitability.” More than half of respondents (53 percent) indicated that cost share programs that had helped to make conservation practices more affordable had been a major factor in their conservation practice decisions.
“Preparation for, or concern about, potential regulations were pretty far down the list of motivations,” Arbuckle said. “Still, about 46 percent indicated that avoiding problems with regulatory agencies had been an important or very important factor driving conservation decisions, so regulatory considerations motivated a substantial proportion of respondents.”
The least important items on the list were those that were categorized as social pressure. Just 33 percent of respondents indicated that “embarrassment about visible problems” had been an important or very important motivational factor for conservation practice adoption. The remaining two items, encouragement from family members and neighborhood expectations, were rated as important or very important by just 19 percent of respondents.
“I think the results really highlight the role that personal stewardship ethics can play in motivating conservation actions, especially the intergenerational dimension,” Arbuckle said. “While it’s important not to downplay the significance of economic and institutional barriers to conservation practice adoption, the results suggest that programs that work to strengthen stewardship ethics, such as Iowa Learning Farms, are an essential component of strategies to get more soil and water conservation practices on the landscape.”
Source:iastate.edu