Conservation tillage in American soybean production has become increasingly common, improving soil health while reducing soil erosion and fuel consumption. This trend has been reinforced by the widespread adoption of glyphosate-based weed control systems. Many weed species have since evolved to resist glyphosate, reducing its effectiveness. We provide evidence that the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds is responsible for significant reductions in the use of conservation tillage in soybean production. We estimate reduced-form and structural probit models of tillage choice, using a large panel of field-level soybean management decisions from across the United States spanning 1998-2016. We find that the first emergence of glyphosate-resistant weed species has little initial effect on tillage practices, though by the time that eight glyphosate-resistant weed species are identified, conservation tillage and no-till use fall by 3.9 percentage points and 7.6 percentage points, …

Agricultural nutrient runoff and leaching into groundwater can impose societal costs that may be external to farmer decisions. Farmers can reduce the environmental impact of nutrient losses by adopting conservation and precision nutrient diagnostic and application practices. We examine the determinants of adoption decisions of such practices using mail survey data from a large, stratified sample of corn and soybean farmers in the U.S. Eastern Corn Belt. Via an ordered probit that captures both adoption and intent to adopt eight different practices, we evaluate a broad range of potential factors driving adoption of conservation and precision agriculture practices. We find that farmer objectives other than income, such as preferences for environmental amenities or social status, were important adoption drivers for conservation and precision technologies, respectively. Livestock farms had a distinct adoption profile, with greater likelihood to adopt cover cropping and less to adopt …

Prairie strips planted into crop fields offer multiple environmental benefits. This study estimates the willingness of U.S. farmers to convert 5% of their largest corn-soybean field to prairie strips in exchange for payment. Using stated preference results to estimate land supply, we find that 21% of farmers are willing to adopt prairie strips at payments equivalent to average Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) rental rates, corresponding to potential conversion of 90,000 acres on 1.8m acres of cropland. Farmers are likelier to adopt in smaller fields and if they perceive that prairie strips will benefit environmental quality or agricultural productivity.

Changing pesticide use is frequently implicated as a driver of declines in butterfly abundance. Existing empirical evidence of linkages between pesticide use and butterfly abundance is limited to studies that fail to account for the full suite of pesticides used by farmers, which fail to account for the effects of substitute pesticides. In this paper, we bring together data on the use of the six principal pesticide groups on corn and soybean fields and butterfly abundance data to create a unique county-level panel dataset spanning the 60 counties in the American Midwest over 17 years. We estimate count data models of total butterfly abundance, the abundance of 16 species, and distinct species identified to measure the effects of each pesticide group while controlling for climate and land use confounders. We find that neonicotinoids, a group of systemic insecticides applied to corn and soybean seeds before planting, have a strong negative association with butterfly diversity and two of …

Over the past century, U.S. field crop farmers have controlled weeds with progressively less costly technologies, moving from hoeing and draft cultivation to motorized cultivation to selective herbicides to broad-spectrum herbicides associated with herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops. The advent of herbicides had the effect of reducing both capital and labor costs by reducing the number of field passes required for effective motorized weed control. The advent of HT crops again reduced both labor and capital costs. These innovations have attracted widespread adoption by farmers. Today, HT crops and broad-spectrum weed control are used by virtually all field crop farmers except those producing for markets that will not accept genetically modified crops. The accelerating spread of herbicide-resistant weeds (an adaptive evolutionary response to extensive reliance on a few herbicides) is triggering U.S. farmers to increase and diversify their herbicide use, increasing both financial costs and …