The “good farmer” literature, grounded in Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, and capital, has provided researchers with a socio-cultural approach to understanding conservation adoption behavior. The good farmer literature suggests that conservation practices may not be widely accepted because they do not allow farmers to demonstrate symbols of good farming. This lens has not been applied to the adoption of conservation tillage (CT), a practice increasingly used to improve conservation outcomes, farming efficiency and crop productivity. Drawing from in-depth interviews (n = 28) with dryland wheat farmers in the US inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW), this research seeks to understand how farmers’ engagement with CT is shaped by identity as a good farmer. Some farmers also sought to bolster social capital through CT by maintaining and strengthening relationships with peers, landowners, and future generations. We further found that engagement with CT provided a link for some participants between productivist values and stewardship values within the good farming identity. The findings from this research may help contextualize the barriers and opportunities to the adoption of agricultural conservation practices within farmer-specific social, cultural, and economic forms of capital.

以布迪厄的田野，习性和资本概念为基础的“好农民”文学，为研究人员提供了一种社会文化方法，以了解保护采用行为。良好的农民文学表明，保护实践可能未被广泛接受，因为它们不允许农民展示良好农业的象征。该镜头尚未应用于保护性耕作（CT）的采用，该实践已越来越多地用于改善保护成果，耕作效率和农作物生产力。通过对美国内陆西北太平洋地区（iPNW）的旱地小麦农民进行的深入访谈（n = 28），该研究旨在了解农民如何通过CT作为良好农民的身份而参与。一些农民还试图通过维持和加强与同龄人，土地所有者和子孙后代的关系，通过CT来增强社会资本。我们进一步发现，与CT的接触为良好参与者身份内的生产者价值和管理价值之间的某些参与者提供了联系。这项研究的结果可能有助于了解在农民特定的社会，文化和经济形式的资本中采用农业保护措施的障碍和机遇。