Agricultural landowners’ willingness to participate in a filter strip program for watershed protection
Introduction
Agricultural non-point source pollution remains a key challenge to communities meeting watershed management objectives in the United States and worldwide (Duncan, 2014, Ma et al., 2014, OECD, 2001, Stuart et al., 2014). Nutrients, sediments, pesticides and pathogens, especially from agricultural sources, impact aquatic ecosystems with adverse effects on water quality and wildlife habitat. In the United States, the National Water Quality Inventory identified agricultural non point source pollution as the leading source of water quality impacts to surveyed rivers and lakes, the third largest source of impairments to surveyed estuaries, and a major contributor to ground water contamination and wetlands degradation (US EPA, 2012b). The Organization of Economic Co-operation for Development (2001) also estimates that agriculture in the European Union contributes about 40–80% of the nitrogen and 20–40% of phosphorus entering surface waters. Similar trends of pollution from agricultural non point source pollution have also been reported in other parts of the world (Agrawal, 1999, Duncan, 2014, Li and Zhang, 1999, Novotny, 1999). With climate change predicted to increase the incidence of severe storm events, water resources are likely to be in further decline if the transport of agricultural pollutants is not adequately checked (Jeppesen et al., 2009, Milly et al., 2005).
Agricultural best management practices (BMPs) are widely accepted among scholars and resource managers as a way to address the issue of nonpoint source pollution and agricultural runoff (Bratt, 2002, Giri et al., 2012, Ryan et al., 2003). Practices such as filter strips and cover crops have proven to be successful measures to control agricultural pollution and improve overall environmental quality (Giri et al., 2012, Shan et al., 2014, Zhang et al., 2010). Recognizing the relevance of BMPs to NPS control, various government programs in the form of payment for environmental services (PES) have been introduced worldwide to encourage BMP adoption. Many of these PES programs target land use and BMPs for agricultural landowners (Asquith et al., 2008, Chen et al., 2009a, Kaplowitz et al., 2012). For instance, Ecuador's SocioPáramo program, the Rural Environment Protection Scheme in Ireland, and several other agri-environmental schemes in Europe and Australia have all been used to incentivize landowners to implement BMPs to protect water and land-based resources (Bremer et al., 2014, Burton and Schwarz, 2013, Greiner and Gregg, 2011, Murphy et al., 2014). Likewise, in the United States, programs like the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service's Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP), Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) have encouraged, with varying degrees of success, landowners to adopt various BMPs by offering financial and technical assistance to participants with eligible agricultural lands (Baylis et al., 2008).
Recently, the US Agricultural Act of 2014 (commonly referred to as the “farm bill”) maintained conservation on working lands as a top priority. The Farm Bill consolidates some existing conservation programs, links crop insurance subsidies to conservation compliance, and provides more than $1 billion of funding for PES programs to boost participation in the conservation programs (Natural Resource Conservation Service, 2014). The implementation of BMPs by agricultural landowners is at the heart of the Act's focus on conservation programs. In the United States, national agricultural and environmental protection efforts are often implemented in conjunction with state partners. For example, in 2000, the state of Michigan in partnership with the federal government and some private organizations introduced the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) to help control soil erosion, improve water quality, and enhance wildlife habitat in priority watersheds. Modeled after the US Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), CREP offers agricultural landowners enhanced monetary incentives including annual rental payments for the length of the contract and cost-share assistance to establish select BMPs on their lands for watershed protection. The voluntary nature of this scheme makes agricultural landowners’ decisions to enroll their lands critical to achieving policy goals. As a number of the original CREP contracts approach their end dates and enrollment rates in Michigan's CREP declines, policymakers are interested in ways to organize the program to help attract new enrollment while encouraging current participants to reenroll their lands when their current contract expires.
This paper uses an examination of the willingness of agricultural landowners in the Saginaw Bay watershed to participate in CREP to explore how programmatic, socio-psychological, and demographic factors impact agricultural landowners decision to participate in government-sponsored BMP programs. Although the CREP program includes other eligible BMP, this study focuses on enrollment in filter strips which is the most widely adopted practice under CREP in Michigan and because of filter strips’ demonstrated effectiveness as a pollutant reduction practice even with minimal width (Abu-Zreig et al., 2004, Zhang et al., 2010).
Section snippets
Agricultural landowners and conservation programs
The literature is replete with studies assessing factors believed to influence farmer's adoption of conservation practices (See reviews from Baumgart-Getz et al., 2012, Knowler and Bradshaw, 2007, Prokopy et al., 2008, Hynes and Garvey, 2009). Some of this literature has specifically explored farmers’ willingness to participate in agri-environmental programs (Ma et al., 2012, Mishra and Khanal, 2013, Vanslembrouck et al., 2002). Nevertheless, most of these studies have focused on farmer and
Research site
Participants of this study were drawn from the Saginaw Bay watershed located on the eastern side of Michigan, United States. Saginaw Bay is a prominent bay on Lake Huron, one of the Laurentian Great Lakes. The watershed covers approximately 8700 square miles and all or part of 22 counties in Michigan. It is the State's largest drainage basin draining about 15% of the total land area of the State. It also features more than 175 inland lakes and about 7000 miles of rivers and streams, and
Participants and response rate
From the 3949 agricultural landowners invited to participate in the study, a total of 1106 individuals participated. This represents an American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) minimum response rate (RR1) of 28.6% after accounting for undelivered invitations, deceased individuals, and refusals. For a landowner to be eligible to participate in CREP filter strips programs, he or she must own cropland immediately adjacent to a water resource (e.g. river, stream, lake) with an
Conclusion and implications
Agri-environmental protection programs have the potential to promote adoption of best management practices by landowners on agricultural lands critical to protecting and enhancing water quality. However, this potential can only be realized if agricultural landowners are willing to enroll or continue to keep their croplands in such programs. This study has explored key programmatic, socio-psychological and demographic factors that shape agricultural landowners decision to participate in an
Acknowledgments
This research was sponsored by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research and received support from AgBioResearch of Michigan State University. We thank Jessica Vega and Scott Weicksel for the research assistance. We are also grateful to Dale Allen, Steve Shine and Kelly Losey of Farm Service Agency of Michigan Department of Agriculture for their support throughout this study.
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