Need as Indicated by Stakeholders

Land managers — whether row-crop farmers, ranchers, private forest owners, or agency managers — face a variety of economic and management challenges from droughts, groundwater depletion, floods and intense storms, wildfires, and pests and disease. A major challenge is to minimize the risks that farmers and other land managers face, while also limiting unintended consequences of intensive land management to society. Responding to these challenges requires greater collaboration on the part of researchers, agricultural practitioners, and policy makers to support the improved financial well-being of farmers and land managers and greater stewardship of America’s natural resources. Responding to these issues faced by farmers aligns with the USDA Secretary’s science priorities for (a) increasing profitability for farmers and ranchers, (b) protecting against invasive species, and (c) promoting soil health and long-term land productivity.

The negative impacts of intensive land management are well documented and have lead to increased incidents of harmful algal blooms and hypoxic zones (Rabalais and Turner 2019), declining groundwater resources for irrigation and drinking water supplies (Deng et al., 2025), the loss of pollinators and other beneficial insects (Perfecto 2009; Vandermeer 2018), the loss of fertile topsoil (Thaler et al., 2021), and increasing wildfire risks for private landowners in multiple parts of the country (Burke et al., 2021). Farmers increasingly face financial hardship and tight margins, with the most recent USDA Census of Agriculture showing that 57% of farms operate at a net-loss (USDA 2024). 

One of the long-standing tools available for private and public land managers has been the promotion of voluntary conservation practices. Broadly, conservation practices entail a wide range of management techniques that have the common goal of providing reduced vulnerability to biophysically driven risks, while also reducing negative externalities to society. Despite extensive natural science research on the potential benefits of conservation practices both on-farm and off-farm, adoption rates have increased slowly for some of the most widely promoted practices, such as no-till and cover crops (Plastina et al., 2024). Dis-adoption continues to play a large role in the slowness of scaling up practices that have important benefits in reducing farmers’ risk to extreme weather (ibid.). At the same time, more research is needed to understand farmers’ and other land managers’ perceptions of the tradeoffs as part of their adoption decision-making process. 

Research on collaborative natural resource management has shown that stakeholders learning about different concerns often work through a series of learning and bargaining phases to generate agreements (Newig et al., 2018). One of the insights from this research is that technical assistance is unlikely to be effective in using an information-deficit approach, where researchers or extension agents simply provide information and expect farmers or land managers to promptly change their management approaches (Blackstock et al., 2010). Collaborative research, such as knowledge co-production approaches, may also be critical to information sharing among farmers. Prior research indicates that knowledge co-production, where both specialists and practitioners learn from one another, does improve learning outcomes (Lemos et al., 2018). 

As with any type of educational approach, coalescing around a shared understanding of whether there is a need for changed management (or behavior) is a crucial first step (Eaton et al., 2021) to then better understand the different decision-making strategies that farmers and land managers may prioritize in response. Current research needs to better understand how information shared through outreach approaches is understood by farmers, what aspects of messages are salient, and whether the economics of different conservation practices are feasible with or without financial assistance. In particular, a better understanding of whether on-farm benefits and costs can be changed by improved knowledge could be critical to improved adoption rates (Irvine et al., 2025). Evaluating conservation program design also needs to be paired with an improved understanding of what dimensions can support an enabling environment to improve conservation practice adoption—such as policies, market demand, technology, infrastructure, alongside technical assistance for decision-making. 

Importance of the Work and What Consequences Are If It Is Not Done

The primary approach for supporting farmers and other land managers is the use of voluntary USDA conservation programs that provide technical and financial assistance. The work to be undertaken by the NC1190 researchers is aimed at how to reduce farmers’ vulnerability to economic and biophysical risks by improving communication and understanding around the advantages and disadvantages of different management strategies related to conservation practices. While there has been substantial research in both natural and social sciences on managing risk (Kasperson et al., 1988; Kahnemann, 2011; Pannell, 2017; Findlater et al., 2019; Houser, 2022) and why farmers do or do not adopt conservation practices (Prokopy et al., 2008; Baumgart-Getz et al., 2012; Prokopy et al., 2019; Ranjan et al., 2019), a major challenge remains on how best to improve the communication of information about risks and to ensure that farmers and land managers are included in the process of identifying management strategies. 

Within social science research, more work is needed to improve how management strategies are understood, trialed, and implemented (Stuart et al., 2014) and how collaborative approaches shape these dimensions (Jackson-Smith et al., 2018). Voluntary programs that provide cost-share support are limited both in the overall amount of financial assistance that can be provided and in the number of farmers that are interested in working with public sector programs. Collaborative and engaged social science research can provide insights into how to improve the uptake of management strategies that can reduce farmers’ economic and biophysical risks and on the potential efficiency of voluntary conservation programs. Without this work, farmers that face tight margins may be less likely to learn of effective approaches because NC1190 social science projects help to facilitate discussions among farmers and researchers to identify best practices.

Because many farmer-focused support programs are implemented without systematic social science research, NC1190 has the potential to increase our knowledge about what aspects of these programs can be improved to increase support for farmers to reduce the risks they face. These insights can be incorporated in conceptual framework, behavioral theories, and decision-making models to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of technical and financial assistance programs for farmers and other land managers. Because farmers operate in a wide variety of biophysical conditions and use varied management strategies, social science research is helpful to identify how different types of designs may be tailored to farmers with large grain farmers or farmers with more varied production. Better tailoring of policy designs and greater technical assistance support for farm management has the potential to increase the use of conservation practices that can minimize the risks of extreme weather, which subsequently can reduce the costs to taxpayers of crop insurance indemnities paid out to farmers.

We propose to continue this multistate research technical committee to advance our understanding of how collaborative research efforts can improve farmers management strategies with respect to conservation practices to reduce their economic and biophysical risks.

Overarching Research Question: How do psychological, economic, and social factors drive land management behaviors that affect conservation outcomes?

Specific research questions:

• Adoption: What factors or resources help farmers overcome barriers to conservation adoption and how does this vary by individual, farm, or landscape characteristics? What types of social, economic, and environmental outcomes emerge from the adoption of conservation practices? 


• Programs and Policies: What is the impact of different programs and policies in addressing conservation adoption? How do programs and policies and their design impact farmer decision making and the structures affecting the adoption of conservation practices?


• Participatory engagement: What approaches to participatory engagement are most effective at achieving improvements in adoption and conservation outcomes?

Technical Feasibility of Work

The scientists collaborating on this Hatch-funded project have made substantial contributions to understanding the opportunities and barriers to promoting conservation practice adoption among land owners. The contributions of the group include identifying the types of generalizable factors that can encourage adoption (Prokopy et al. 2019; Ranjan et al. 2019), new frameworks for how stakeholders can be more effectively engaged to contribute to learning and disseminating knowledge (Jackson-Smith et al. 2018, Church et al., 2020; Church et al., 2021; Yoder et al., 2024), and management-specific understandings of farmer decision-making (Asprooth et al., 2023; Asprooth et al., 2025; Upadhaya et al., 2023; Nowakze & Arbuckle, 2023). The team has documented its ability to work together with multiple collaborative projects and grant proposals each since the previous proposal was approved. Over the past two years, the members have produced on average a total of 30 publications, presentations, and reports each year.

Advantages of Doing the Work as a Multistate Effort

Current Proposal: Current team members work in diverse US ecosystems - Mississippi River, Great Plains, Chesapeake Bay, Great Lakes, and the Columbia River - that experience significant water and land conservation challenges such as water quality impairment, water scarcity and conflict, soil erosion, and ecosystem transformation. The challenges associated with catalyzing and enabling conservation behaviors may best be overcome by facilitating learning across these geographic contexts, groups of land managers (farmers, ranchers, forest owners, and public agency managers), and decision-contexts. Multi-state efforts create openings for quasi-experimental designs and comparative analysis. Working through a multistate team will enable the researchers to co-develop and test knowledge about the individual and collective actions to improve water quality across multiple ecological, cultural, political, and social contexts. In other words, working across regions will allow the researchers to more accurately identify triggers of behavioral change and under what conditions those triggers effect change. Further, many of the social scientists participating in this research have excellent case study data that are specific to their states or regions. Working across multiple states will allow for comparisons of these cases to identify key variables. To date, the opportunities and funding for across state collaboration have been limited. Finally, working as a multi-state effort provides opportunities for mentoring and collaboration among social scientists at different professional stages who are working in natural resources conservation management contexts.

What the likely impacts will be from successfully completing the work

We see two main types of impacts from this work. First, our research approach with farmers and other conservation stakeholders is often participatory. This approach can increase two-way flows of knowledge between farmers and researchers, which improves the quality of the research questions and findings from a deeper understanding of what information and ideas farmers and other stakeholders have and would also benefit from having (e.g., Blackstock et al., 2010; Jackson-Smith et al., 2018). It allows the research to be better tailored for application and ultimately to provide recommendations on adaptive strategies where farmers and land managers can implement conservation strategies that can also increase the financial and social viability of farming. To accomplish these impacts, we will continue to build on and synthesize prior research across states to draw on findings on individual and collective behaviors for conservation. We will also continue to update theoretical frameworks and models on land management and conservation behaviors. The second major area of impact will be to provide information and recommendations to conservation managers and practitioners at local, state, and federal levels on how different policy design approaches can have their intended effect on conservation adoption for farmers of different resource capacities, sizes, and operations (e.g., Wardropper et al., 2015; Church et al., 2021; Irvine et al., 2025). Adaptive strategies are likely to be important as farmers face changing market environments and the ongoing challenges with extreme weather.

For a list of expected participants, please see the attached file.