Not ready for a long-term commitment? Analyzing temporal variability in cover crop adoption

This paper explores the temporal dynamics of adoption and disadoption of cover crops, a major agricultural conservation practice, utilizing three waves of a panel survey of 519 Iowa farmers (2014, 2016, and 2018) in the United States. Based on cover crop use behaviors over time, we categorize farmers into distinct groups: continuous adopters (6.6%), intermittent adopters (28.9%), and continuous nonadopters (64.5%). While the overall percentage of adopters increased from 17.7% to 22.9% during the study period, there was significant flux in adoption behaviors. As a result, the observed increase in the adoption rate (5.2%) was much smaller than the potential increase (18%) that would have occurred if all adopters had continued the practice. Comparisons of farm characteristics and cover crop attitudes between adoption categories indicated that continuous adopters were more likely to raise livestock, farm highly erodible land, and perceive greater benefits from cover crops than other groups. The continuous nonadopters reported knowing the least about cover crops but were also the least interested in learning more about using the practice. Intermittent adopters represented a middle ground on most variables. They were closer to continuous nonadopters in their lower propensity to raise livestock and farm highly erodible land, but they were similar to continuous adopters in gross farm sales and farm size. Despite planting significantly fewer cover crop acres, having significantly lower propensity to have received cost-share, and expressing moderate perceptions of both benefits and barriers compared to continuous adopters, intermittent adopters expressed strong interest in learning more about the practice. Given the mounting evidence that intermittent adoption and disadoption are common, both academic research and policy design should shift from focusing largely on “initial adoption” to an integrated emphasis on both “initial and continued adoption” to develop policies and programs that are effective not only for spurring initial adoption in the short term but also for understanding and incentivizing decisions to continue the use of practices to meet longer-term agricultural sustainability goals.