Incentivizing Conservation: Understanding Opportunities and Barriers That Influence Iowa Farmers’ Decisions to Adopt Nutrient Management Conservation Practices Over Time

Date:
Aug 2024
Investigators:
  • Chris Morris, Iowa State University
  • J. Arbuckle, Iowa State University

Issue

Conservation practices such as cover crops can significantly reduce soil erosion, improve soil health, and reduce nutrient runoff and leaching on Iowa’s agricultural lands. While the promotion of voluntary adoption of such practices has been the main focus of policies and initiatives, such as the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS), adoption rates by farmers remain well below levels needed to make significant environmental improvements at scale.

Recent research has explored farmer conservation adoption as a dynamic process, examining farmers’ shifts between intention to adopt a practice, adoption, and continuance or discontinuance over time. Preliminary results show significant movement between categories, including a large number of farmers discontinuing a practice after previously having adopted it. These results indicate that progress toward nutrient management conservation goals in the state would be significantly higher had these farmers continued using these practices rather than discontinuing them.

 

Objective

This research project aims to fill important gaps in our understanding of complex farmer adoption behavior over time. Survey data from the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll (IFRLP), a long-term panel survey of Iowa farmers, will be used to identify farmers who have moved between four different categories of adoption behavior related to cover crop use: a) openness to adoption, b) intention to adopt, c) adoption and d) non-adoption.

Approach

This study will focus on continuance/discontinuance by conducting in-depth interviews with farmers who have initially adopted cover crops and either continued this practice over time or have moved to another category of non-adoption (discontinuance). These interviews will identify factors that influence farmers to either continue or discontinue conservation practices. Results will provide much-needed information about why farmers transition to non-adoption after previously adopting a practice, which will inform the development of policies and outreach for encouraging farmers to maintain practices over time.

Award Number:
2024-02

Project Update

January 2026

After several farmers declined to respond to our requests over the summer and early fall for interviews via email and phone, we decided to send out physical letters to their home addresses in early December. This resulted in 6 new interviews in December, for a total of 15 interviews. We also now have representatives from each of the four categories of cover crop use. We have created an account with 3Play Media.com, a professional transcription service, and have had all 15 interviews transcribed.

I have begun to conduct preliminary analysis of the interviews conducted in the spring for common themes and reported these findings at the INRC Showcase for Stakeholders on 11-24-2025. Preliminary themes include:

  1. Common motivations for using cover crops include soil health, grazing, erosion control and federal, state, and private cost-share programs.
  2. Common barriers to continuing cover crop use include cost, timing and compatibility with farming operation, weather and land tenure.
  3. Recommendations from farmers regarding how to promote continued cover crop use include money from financial programs being available from the start of the contract, less bureaucracy in programs and measurements of cover crop environmental impacts/financial benefits that document positive change.

Analysis of new interviews and contacting potential participants is ongoing. 

Related Activities and Accomplishments 

1 presentation and one planned for the Agriculture, Food and Human Values conference in June 2026.

July 2025

Activities during this reporting period included:

  • The project team finalized IRB approval.
  • The project team worked with the ISU Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology (CSSM) to develop a list of potential farmer interviewees from the list of applicable Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll (IFRLP) survey database.
  • The project team finalized the Informed Consent form and two Farmer Interview Guides.
  • Colby Brandt, undergraduate research assistant on the project, began to contact farmers for participation.
  • Brandt and Morris conducted a total of nine interviews with farmers.
  • Brandt developed a poster summarizing the project work so far for his end-of-semester Science with Practice presentation.
  • Morris presented an overview of the project for an INRC workshop.

Through the fall, they will be finishing interviews and beginning qualitative coding and analysis.

Other activities and accomplishments 

2 presentations

January 2025

Following initial funding in August, during the fall semester, the project team developed two interview protocol guides: one for farmers who continued using cover crops between 2020 and 2022; and one for farmers who discontinued cover crops during this time. The investigators applied for ISU Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, which was granted in December. The investigators then developed a participant recruitment protocol using the Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll. Upon receiving participant contact information from ISU's Center for Survey Statistics and Methodology (CSSM) in January, participants will be contacted and interviews will begin.