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Sociology of Agriculture and Food (SAFRIG)

Does farmer co-production of knowledge represent a more effective path to innovate conservation solutions? Douglas Jackson-Smith*, Douglas Jackson-Smith, Alexandra Jefferies, Heather Dantzker, Alexandre Rehbinder, Ernie Shea,

Despite decades of research and public spending to incentivize the use of a wide range of conservation practices in the United States, adoption rates remain frustratingly low.  There are many reasons for this ‘adoption gap,’ but a lack of awareness of conservation practices (and their expected environmental benefits) is not a significant factor. Rather, a common finding in most quantitative and qualitative research is that many farmers are not confident in the on-farm performance of conservation practices (particularly for outcomes that farmers need to see to justify their use). Even among adopters, the ‘fit’ and performance of conservation practices on working farms has been inconsistent, leading to surprisingly high rates of disadoption.  In this presentation, we will draw from our experience on a major USDA funded Sustainable Agricultural Systems project (From the Ground Up) that is building a transdisciplinary platform to support farmer-led on-farm research and innovation to improve the performance of conservation practices. While we are only 2 years into a 5 year project, we use our own observations and results from a survey and interviews with project participants to reflect on whether this ‘co-production’ path is likely to yield different outcomes.