Search Results (5)

Conversion of grassland to cropland in the Prairie Pothole Region of North and South Dakota has many environmental consequences, including the loss of important migratory bird breeding grounds, increased agricultural chemical use, and release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere. While conversion has negative ecological consequences, in years of high crop prices, cropland can generate higher returns than grassland, and farmers therefore face economic incentives for conversion in these years. However, recent research suggests that farmers may not convert land despite the economic incentives to do so. In this paper, we used the results of a framed economic experiment to explore the role of anticipated regret in farmers’ land conversion decisions. We used duration analysis to investigate the effect of anticipated regret salience on the risk of grass-to-crop land conversion and examined the regret participants express ex post about their land use decisions. Our results show that conversion risk from grassland to cropland was lower when anticipated regret was made salient than when it was not. Additionally, farmers expressed more regret about decisions to convert their land than when they left their land in grass. These results suggest that anticipated regret may play a role in farmers’ land conversion decisions, and that encouraging farmers to consider how they might feel about their decisions in the future may lead to lower rates of grass-to-crop conversion. We propose operational policy strategies based on our findings. Full article

A growing body of research has examined farmers’ increasing economic challenges in the United States and the new models adopted to help them increase profit, remain in business, and achieve agricultural sustainability. However, the entrepreneurial strategies that Western Corn (Zea mays) Belt farmers use to overcome economic challenges and achieve agricultural sustainability remain understudied. The model system used in this study was eastern South Dakota, and it examined the entrepreneurial aspirations of commodity crop producers using mail and online survey data collected in 2018. Using the diffusion of innovations framework, we investigated how innovation and entrepreneurialism spread among farmers; whether frequent training, building, and using social networks were essential to farmers’ business success; and how age, education level, and farm size relate to their entrepreneurial aspirations. We analyzed these three socio-demographic characteristics of farmers against their adoption of entrepreneurship and engagement in networking and training. Our results show that (1) farmers are looking for ways to adopt entrepreneurship; (2) education and farm size are positively related to the adoption of entrepreneurship; (3) age is negatively related to farmers’ adoption of entrepreneurship, and (4) a larger farm size is associated with farmers’ use of social networks and their participation in training. This study highlights the importance of providing farmers with entrepreneurial training, equipping them with necessary skills, maximizing their use of social networks and opportunities, and encouraging strategic planning and best management practices. Full article

Land allotment was embraced by the U.S. Government in the late 1800s and early 1900s as part of a solution to the “Indian problem”, the goal of which was assimilation into the Euro-American cultural and economic system. As a progressivist program, it was imposed with enthusiasm and confidence, dividing reservations into rectangular land parcels (allotments) in the belief that the allotment recipients would become yeoman farmers of the Jeffersonian mold. Tribes were unable to thwart the imposition of allotment, despite their best efforts, and its devastating long-term effects are now well known. Much less is understood, however, about the efforts of various tribes, sometimes successful and sometimes not, to obtain modifications to the terms of allotment imposed on them. We describe how the people of the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota successfully advocated for modifications which worked to their significant advantage. We draw heavily from the outgoing correspondence and allotment records of the Special Allotting Agent, Carl Gunderson, along with contemporaneous records of legislative proceedings and other documents. The successful efforts of the people of Standing Rock resulted not only in equitable access to scarce timber, but in allotments to numerous individuals who otherwise would have been ineligible. The net impact was the additional allotment of nearly 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) to over 1800 individuals who otherwise would have received nothing. Full article

The inability of a farmer to plant an insured crop by the policy’s final planting date can pose financial challenges for the grower and cause reduced production for a widely impacted region. Prevented planting is primarily caused by excess moisture or rainfall such as the catastrophic flooding and widespread conditions that prevented active field work in the midwestern region of United States in 2019. While the Farm Service Agency reports the number of such “prevent plant” acres each year at the county scale, field-scale maps of prevent plant fields—which would enable analyses related to assessing and mitigating the impact of climate on agriculture—are not currently available. The aim of this study is to demonstrate a method for mapping likely prevent plant fields based on flood mapping and historical cropland maps. We focused on a study region in eastern South Dakota and created flood maps using Landsat 8 and Sentinel 1 images from 2018 and 2019. We used automatic threshold-based change detection using NDVI and NDWI to accentuate changes likely caused by flooding. The NDVI change detection map showed vegetation loss in the eastern parts of the study area while NDWI values showed increased water content, both indicating possible flooding events. The VH polarization of Sentinel 1 was also particularly useful in identifying potential flooded areas as the VH values for 2019 were substantially lower than those of 2018, especially in the northern part of the study area, likely indicating standing water or reduced biomass. We combined the flood maps from Landsat 8 and Sentinel 1 to form a complete flood likelihood map over the entire study area. We intersected this flood map with a map of fallow pixels extracted from the Cropland Data Layer to produce a map of predicted prevent plant acres across several counties in South Dakota. The predicted figures were within 10% error of Farm Service Agency reports, with low errors in the most affected counties in the state such as Beadle, Hanson, and Hand. Full article

Bioenergy produced from perennial feedstocks such as woody biomass could serve as an opportunity to strengthen local and regional economies and also jointly produce various environmental services. In order to assess the potential for biomass-based bioenergy, it’s essential to characterize the interest that potential biomass suppliers have in such an endeavor. In the U.S. Great Plains region, this largely means assessing relevant perceptions of farmers and ranchers. We conducted a series of farmer and rancher oriented focus groups in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas to qualitatively explore opinions about the role that trees can play in agriculture and interest in woody biomass systems within existing Northern Great Plains (NGP) farms and ranches. Our findings suggest that farmer and ranchers generally value the role that trees, or tree-based practices like windbreaks can play in agriculture particularly on marginal farmland in terms of conservation or crop protection. Yet relative to the potential of trees as a biomass crop there is a distinct lack of knowledge and skepticism. Farmers and ranchers also noted variable degrees of risk concern and uncertainty regarding investing in tree-based systems, as well as a number of perceived external market related constraints to integrating trees within their managed systems. Most of the participants recognized that if biomass production or an increase in tree planting and management in general were to expand in the NGP region, government programs would likely be required to provide much needed technical guidance and financial incentives. As the NGP regional bioeconomy continues to emerge and expand, private and public investment relative to niche bioenergy feedstocks such as woody biomass should address the type of information needs that farmers and ranchers have relative to integrating biomass production into existing farm and ranch systems. Full article