Source: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS submitted to
TARGETING INFORMATION TO IMPROVE SOIL STEWARDSHIP BY MOTIVATED GROWERS
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
NEW
Funding Source
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1026327
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
ILLU-875-986
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Apr 17, 2021
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2025
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Wander, MI, M..
Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
2001 S. Lincoln Ave.
URBANA,IL 61801
Performing Department
Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences
Non Technical Summary
The linear view of innovation in agricultural contexts is being replaced by systems approaches including food regimes that consider relationality. Efforts seeking to motivate voluntary efforts by individual producers should focus on information produced for farmers or policy that influences farmer decision making instead of on consumer facing formats. This approach is compatible with market driven approaches and should note farmer'sdecisionmaking process regarding stewardship are primarily business focused and have more lasting personal and economic consequences resulting from commitments of action and resources to provide public goods. To optimize information to influence decision making one should consider farm typologies that sort producers into context specific groups that are separated by motivations. Torres et al. (2020) recently segmented these based on purchasing relationships, that consider grain requirements, business characteristics and buyer type to distinguish committed organic buyers primarily driven by social focus values and pragmatic organic buyers motivated by personal interests. Identification of practical, affordable and useful networks may be one way to make segments (diversified, organic and regenerative systems) more competitive within the farming sector. By pooling of producers' data to document environmental or quality traits one can support decision making, increase enterprise value, andlower the costs of verification. Use of sharing networks to identify, prioritize and fulfill information needs can increase value of efforts and promote action.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60501101070100%
Knowledge Area
605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics;

Subject Of Investigation
0110 - Soil;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology;
Goals / Objectives
Objective One: Identify current informational and programmatic needs of motivated stewards.Objective Two: Use participatory methods to search for and fill gaps that limit data translation to diversified, organic and regenerative farm contexts to increase sector success.
Project Methods
Activities will build upon a project (USDA-NIFA-ICGP-003218) that applied the theory of planned behavior to explore the attitudes, norms and behavioral controls determining farmer adoption of conservation behaviors. 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 or programmatic needs. Addressing those needs is critical as relevance and ability to support behavior is a more important determinant of action that data accuracy. Mixed methods will include focus groups, systematic review using meta-analytic literature summary, and surveys and interviews that build upon themes and categories identified previously. Topics include the need to identify datasets, indicators and formats for delivery that inform and or reward adaptive management while satisfying planning and reporting objectives. Network analysis will be used to delimit relevant inference space for content application. Efforts will take advantage of existing models, tools, and networksto identify data or resource gaps, produce educational resources, and improve decision support tools to encourage soil stewardship.Plant and soil sample analysis of submitted samples will be conducted based on needs and interests of participating farmers.Efforts will also consider changing farmer attitudes by revisiting questions asked (IRB #18631) as part of a USDA NIFA grant (2015-51106-24198) that studied the concerns of organic grain and livestock farmers in relation to their interest in decision support tools that might help them manage nitrogen, build soils, and protect the environment. Responses to some question are expected to have changed substantially. For example, in 2018 farmers were more concerned about climate impacts on agronomic performance than about environmental outcomes. Priority concerns over nutrient and manure management were focused on agronomic performance rather than on environmental outcomes. Only half of respondents used any mobile or web apps including weather-related apps or web soil surveys to make farm management decisions. Most did not use record keeping software either and of those that did, most used spreadsheets they designed themselves. Over a third of farmers expressed interest in software that uses farm data to help inform decision-making and only half were concerned about data-privacy issues. Over half were not comfortable sharing their data with the federal government. Responders also had greater confidence in private entities overpublic institutions or public-private partnerships holding and possibly using their data. Research will concentrate on row and specialty crop growers in the Midwest but also engage national and regional grower-networks that are pooling data to supply added-value markets. Findings will be shared through outreach and peer-review channels (eg: eOrganic.org) and include updates to articles on nutrient budgeting, case-studies, and use of participatory networks. Any compiled datasets will be shared through open data repositories.