Tailoring Soil Quality Information for Different Audiences.

We will share results from a study that applied the theory of planned behavior to explore the attitudes, norms and behavioral controls determining farmer adoption of conservation behaviors and compared those results with soil quality and conservation performance of organic and conventional grain farms in Illinois.  On farm research and farm interviews were used to gather data and management history needed to run evaluation tools and models to predict outcomes for individual farms.  We are exploring how that information can and should be delivered to motivate use of conservation enhancing measures.  Measured results, interviews and surveys suggest business orientation, land access and social connectedness most influence farmers’ practice choice and propensity to participate in voluntary stewardship efforts and can be used to segment producers into groups with distinct information/programmatic needs. Farmers expressed great interest in use of models and ranking tools when data were based on their own farms and interpretations were made based on system optimization rather than on comparison among groups.  Despite farmers’ expressed interest in stewardship, their feedback suggests refining management within segments is unlikely to improve stewardship unless information can somehow be used to reverse the trends of farm-size expansion and increased reliance on crop insurance that both promote resource degradation and discourage conservation.