Gnel Gabrielyan, Sachin Chintawar, and John Westra F ACTORS A FFECTING A DOPTION OF C OVER C ROPS AND I TS E FFECT ON N ITROGEN U SAGE AMONG US F ARMERS CNREP 2010, New Orleans, LA, May 26-29, 2010

O UTLINE  Introduction  Literature Review  Data  Methodology  Results  Conclusion

I NTRODUCTION  Changing environmental concern  Changing agricultural practices  Multifunctional agriculture - besides providing traditional products, agriculture provides many public goods and services

I NTRODUCTION  Technology adoption Water conservation and organic production practices Cover Cropping  Increased yield  Decrease Nitrogen (N) leakage

L ITERATURE R EVIEW  Olaf Erenstein (2003) and Ngouajio et al. (2002)  Cover crops help increase soil fertility and weed management constraints  U.M. Sainju et al (2002) and Larson et al. (2001)  Use of cover crops can provide N to the next crop, conserve N concentration through mineralization and erosion, and reduce nitrogen fertilizer requirements  Tonitto et al. (2005)  Nitrate leaching was reduced by 40% in legume- based systems

O BJECTIVE  Identify determinants of cover crop adoption.  Understand the change in the probability of adoption of cover crops by demographic, socio- economic, and agronomic characteristics.  Analyze how N management varies by farm relative to adoption or non-adoption of this technology.  Estimate the change in N use for those who adopted and didn’t adopt cover crops by demographic, socio-economic, and agronomic characteristics.

D ATA  The survey conducted in 2009 with collaborators from 6 universities (NSF funded Project)  7 states in MRB – IL, IN, IA, OH, MI, MN, and WI  2 ERS regions (Northern Crescent – IL, IN, IA, OH; and Heartland – MI, MN, and WI)  233 organic & 212 conventional farmers  Data for 2008 production year  Organic farmers only in this analysis

D ATA Variables  Demographic – ERS region, age, farm income, education, experience;  Socioeconomic - farm size, proportion of rented land, livestock, rented/not, cover crops, and information sources for N decision making – other farmers who adapted cover crops, other farmers relying on commercial N, organizations promoting cover crops, and organic fertilizer dealers;  Agronomic – all CRP payments, slope (more than 6%), no till used, rotation with winter cover crops, tile drainage,

M ETHODOLOGY Two-Stage model 6) Test of Endogeneity using Smith Blundell (1986) two-step procedure

R ESULTS Cover_cropCoefficientStandard ErrorMarginal Effect Op. age** Farm size (acres) Total farm inc. (in $100,000) ** Op. education Years of experience** Expsq** Share of rented field Region (Northern Crescent ) Isds_cov* Isds_org Isds_ode* All conservative payments* Slope _cons Estimation Results from Probit Model (first stage) * - 10% significance, ** - 5% significance

R ESULTS NitrogenCoefficient Standard Error Marginal Effects Probability (%) Adopters Non- adopters Predicted values of cover crop** Op.’s education Farm size (acres) Total farm inc. (in $100,000) * Livestock* No-till used Tile drainage Slope Rented** Rotation with winter cover crops** Isds_com _cons Estimation Results from Tobit Model (second stage) * - 10% significance, ** - 5% significance

C ONCLUSION  Farmers’ age (+) and experience (-) had significants effect on cover crop adoption.  Conservation payments positively affected the adoption of cover crops.  Interacting with other farmers who were using cover crops increased the probability of adoption, but organic fertilizer dealers had negative effect on adoption.  If the field is rented then the nitrogen use decreased by 29 and for adopters and 40 pounds/acre non- adopters.  Cover crop adoption significantly decreased nitrogen use by farmers (68 and 96 pounds/acre for adopters and non-adopters respectively)

T HANK Y OU Questions/Comments ? ? ?