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Exploring the mechanisms behind farmers’ perceptions of nutrient loss risk

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Abstract

Harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie’s western basin are caused in large part by nutrient loss from agricultural production. While use of nutrient management practices is encouraged to reduce agricultural nutrient loss and its consequent environmental impacts, such practices are not universally adopted. This study aims to better understand the factors that influence western Lake Erie basin farmers’ risk perceptions associated with agricultural nutrient loss, and thus further our knowledge of how adoption of nutrient management practices may be increased. We propose a conceptual model to explain the relationships that we hypothesize to influence farmers’ risk perceptions associated with agricultural nutrient loss. Specifically, we consider the roles that farmer conservation identity, farmers’ perceived sufficiency of their nutrient management practices, and land vulnerability to nutrient loss play in influencing risk perceptions. We find that many of the hypothesized relationships are not statistically significant, and that risk perception associated with nutrient loss is primarily driven by farmers’ conservation identities (as opposed to the physical vulnerability of the land). While farmers’ perceived sufficiency of their nutrient management practices plays some role in governing risk perceptions, we do not observe the hypothesized relationship between land vulnerability to nutrient loss and perceived sufficiency of nutrient management practices.

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Notes

  1. It is worth noting that the authors of this study considered the high nutrient retention capacity of clay soils, compared to the low nutrient retention capacity of sandy soils, in determining which soil textures would result in lower water quality. The findings from this study thus supported the authors’ hypothesis, but this differs from the way the role of soil texture was conceptualized in the analysis presented in this paper.

  2. See Online Resource 1 for a more detailed review of factors influencing physical vulnerability.

  3. The average conservation identity score across all respondents to the survey used in this analysis was 3.01. The same seven questions used as a measure of conservation identity in this survey were identified in another survey collected by this research group in 2019; the average conservation identity score across all respondents in the 2019 survey was 2.99.

  4. Herrero et al. (2018) investigated perceptions of manure among dairy farmers and dairy farm employees in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile and asked respondents about the extent to which manure effluent lagoons can contaminate groundwater, manure effluents can transmit pathogens, and manure effluent and slurry can contaminate shallow aquifers. Mean response for both groups was generally greater than four (agree) on a scale from one (strongly disagree) to five (strongly agree) for these questions, although dairy farmers’ average agreement with pathogen transmission was 3.76 and shallow aquifer contamination was 3.63. Núñez (2005) studied factors influencing manure adoption. They found that only 16% of surveyed Iowa and Missouri crop farmers believed that manure application improved water quality, and that many farmers think that manure has a neutral or detrimental impact on water quality [mean score of 3.11 on a scale from one (agree) to five (disagree)]. Based on these findings, we have some reason to think that manure users’ risk perceptions may have reflected their use of manure.

  5. Additional years of management data and practices across the rotation would improve representation of land management and land characteristics in the physical vulnerability index.

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Funding

The funding was supported by NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems Program (Grant No. BCS-1114934).

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  1. Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, The Ohio State University, 590 Woody Hayes Drive, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Elizabeth R. Schwab & Margaret M. Kalcic

  2. School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Robyn S. Wilson

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Schwab, E.R., Wilson, R.S. & Kalcic, M.M. Exploring the mechanisms behind farmers’ perceptions of nutrient loss risk. Agric Hum Values 38, 839–850 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10196-z

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