Improving nitrogen (N) fertilizer management in agricultural systems is critical to meeting environmental goals while maintaining economically viable and productive food systems. This paper applies a farm systems framework to analyze how adoption of N management practices is related to different farming operation characteristics and the extent to which fertilizer, soil and irrigation practices are related to each other. We develop a multivariate probit regression model to analyze the interdependency of these adoption behaviors from 966 farmers across three watersheds and diverse cropping systems in the Central Valley of California. Our analysis demonstrates that farmers adopt varying combinations or portfolios of practices, with the most common portfolio featuring a core set of fertilizer-focused practices. Irrigation infrastructure is an especially important farm operation characteristic for encouraging adoption of innovative practice portfolios that integrate water and fertilizer management. These findings highlight the ability for a farm systems approach to improve our understanding of farmer decision-making across diverse agricultural landscapes.

改善农业系统中的氮肥管理对实现环境目标，同时维持经济上可行的生产性食品系统至关重要。本文采用了一个农场系统框架来分析氮肥管理措施的采用如何与不同的农业运营特征相关以及肥料，土壤和灌溉措施之间的相关程度。我们开发了多元概率回归模型，以分析来自加利福尼亚中部谷地三个流域和不同种植系统的966名农民的收养行为之间的相互依赖性。我们的分析表明，农民采用不同的实践组合或组合，最常见的组合以肥料为核心的核心实践为一组。灌溉基础设施是农场经营的一个特别重要的特征，对于鼓励采用将水和肥料管理相结合的创新实践产品组合而言。这些发现凸显了采用农场系统方法来提高我们对跨多种农业环境的农民决策的理解的能力。