Too Much Bureaucracy, Too Little Time:A Case Study in Using the Agent Based Approach to Analyze the Efficacy of the Environmental Quality Incentive Program

Since the passage of the 1996 Farm Act, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) has provided over $10 billion in technology adoption subsidies. One of the national conservation priorities in EQIP is water conservation, but it is not known how participation in EQIP by irrigators affects water application rates and decisions to expand or reduce a farm’s irrigated acreage. Using a farm-level panel data set drawn from three national samples of irrigators taken in 1998, 2003, and 2008, this study provides the first national scale econometric estimates of the changes in water application rates and irrigated acreage that result when a farm receives EQIP payments. Due to a five-fold increase in EQIP funding following the 2002 farm bill, the change in EQIP participation between 2008 and earlier years is largely the result of an exogenous policy shock. A difference-in-differences estimator that exploits this change in EQIP funding and also controls for unobserved farm-specific variables, suggests that for the average farm participating in EQIP between 2004 and 2008, the EQIP payments may have reduced water application rates but also may have increased total water use and led to an expansion in irrigated acreage. However, since EQIP participation is voluntary, there may still be a need to correct for bias due to sample selection. A nearest neighbor matching estimator finds no evidence of any statistically significant effect of EQIP participation on technology adoption rates, water use, water application rates or acreages, which suggests that there is a high degree of self-selection into the program.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) was developed to encourage producer adoption of practices that promote resource conservation on lands in agricultural production. Reviewing the 2002 Farm Bill, EQIP rules, and local EQIP structure using Michigan as a case study, producers had ample opportunity to participate in EQIP. Yet past EQIP support of pest, nutrient, and conservation vegetation management was low among six states from 1997 to 2002, averaging 1.1% to 2.7% of total EQIP funds allocated. The past funding pattern and analysis of local resource concern priorities and incentive rates suggested that program modifications were warranted. The Michigan case study showed that participation in the NRCS advisory process, in partnership with commodity representatives and university specialists, was an effective avenue to recommend and obtain local EQIP modifications. After modifications were accepted in Michigan, increases were seen in producer participation in EQIP and in funds committed (about 15%) to adoption of a variety of techniques with pest, nutrient, and conservation vegetation value. This approach of analysis and engagement in the EQIP process is likely to work in other states, given common EQIP structure and governance, past funding patterns, and availability of supporting extension, research, and commodity partners.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is the primary conservation program on working agricultural land. The United States Department of Agriculture obligated over $15 billion through EQIP cost‐sharing contracts during the fiscal years 2009–2019. The voluntary nature of the program and the lack of performance assessment have led to speculations regarding the effectiveness of the program in delivering environmental benefits, in particular for improving water quality. This study provides quantitative estimates of the influence of EQIP payments on local water quality at a national scale. We link monitoring station level water quality readings with EQIP contract data and exploit the direction of river flow for identification. The estimated effects of EQIP vary across water quality measures. Estimates indicate that EQIP payments have significantly reduced biochemical oxygen demand and nitrogen, indicating improvements in water quality, but increased total suspended solids, fecal coliform, and phosphorus, suggesting that the implementation of certain conservation practices might have increased soil erosion and pathogen transfer, especially in watersheds with more agricultural production.

Food, water, and worker protection regulations have driven availability, and loss, of pesticides for use in pest management programs. In response, public-supported research and extension projects have targeted investigation and demonstration of reduced-risk integrated pest management (IPM) techniques. But these new techniques often result in higher financial burden to the grower, which is counter to the IPM principle that economic competitiveness is critical to have IPM adopted. As authorized by the 2002 Farm Bill and administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), conservation programs exist for delivering public-supported financial incentives to growers to increase environmental stewardship on lands in production. NRCS conservation programs are described, and the case for providing financial incentives to growers for implementing IPM is presented. We also explored the opportunity and challenge to use one key program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), to aid grower adoption of IPM. The EQIP fund distribution to growers from 1997 to 2002 during the last Farm Bill cycle totaled approximately 1.05 billion dollars with a portion of funds supporting an NRCS-designed pest management practice. The average percentage of allocation of EQIP funds to this pest management practice among states was 0.77 +/- 0.009% (mean +/- SD). Using Michigan as an example, vegetable and fruit grower recognition of the program's use to implement IPM was modest (25% of growers surveyed), and their recognition of its use in aiding implementation of IPM was improved after educational efforts (74%). Proposals designed to enhance program usefulness in implementing IPM were delivered through the NRCS advisory process in Michigan. Modifications for using the NRCS pest management practice to address resource concerns were adopted, incentive rates for pest management were adjusted, and an expanded incentive structure for IPM technique adoption was tabled for future consideration. The case is strong for using public-supported financial incentives offered by the EQIP to aid grower adoption of IPM as a means to address resource concerns, but current use of the EQIP for this purpose is modest to meager. With appropriate program adjustments and increased grower awareness, USDA NRCS conservation programs, and the EQIP in particular, may provide an important opportunity for growers to increase their use of IPM as a resource conservation and farm management tool.

A “lifeline out of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 crisis”? An ecofeminist critique of the European Green Deal

What's driving adoption of in‐season nitrogen application?

Farmers in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. face tremendous pressure to reduce nutrient losses from agriculture. Increasing crop rotation diversity with overwintering cover crops can support ecological processes that maintain productivity while improving multiple ecosystem functions, including nutrient retention. We conducted a mixed-methods study to understand how financial incentive programs impact transitions to cover cropping in Michigan. Michigan farms span a wide range of soil types, climate conditions, and cropping systems that create opportunities for cover crop adoption in the state. We tested the relationship between Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) payments for cover crops and cover crop adoption between 2008–2019, as measured by remote sensing. We coupled this quantitative analysis with interviews with 21 farmers in the Lake Erie watershed to understand farmers’ perspectives on how incentive programs could support greater cover crop adoption. Panel fixed effects regressions showed that EQIP increased winter cover crop presence. Every EQIP dollar for cover crops was associated with a 0.01 hectare increase in winter cover, while each hectare enrolled in an EQIP contract for cover crops was associated with a 0.86–0.93 hectare increase in winter cover. In semi-structured interviews, farmers reported that financial incentives were instrumental to cover crop adoption, but that program outcomes fall short of intended goals due to policy design problems that may limit widespread participation and effectiveness. Thus, strengthening EQIP and related conservation programs could support broader transitions to diversified farming systems that are more sustainable and resilient.

Water Quality Trading (WQT) and federal conservation programs such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) employ incentive payments to encourage agricultural best management practices (BMPs). In many cases, WQT and EQIP are encouraging the same types of farmers to implement the same types of BMPs using similar incentive payments. A number of analysts have recommended that WQT partner with EQIP to recruit farmers, yet the literature lacks an analysis of whether EQIP could adequately substitute for WQT's project selection process. In this article, we systematically compare the project ranking procedures used by WQT and EQIP and suggest which partnership structures might be most appropriate.

Summary We present data from producers in the upper Great Plains of the US for whom at least one Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contract expired in the last seven years. The survey covered two groups, one with a retired CRP contract and a second with a retired CRP contract who then enrolled in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) program. Most respondents at least tried to re-enroll into CRP, many unsuccessfully. The CRP group primarily moved to crops on the former CRP land, while EQIP respondents focused on cattle and grazing. Awareness of the EQIP program on the part of the CRP group was only 58%. We compared groups regarding what they considered doing with the land at the end of their respective programs, CRP and EQIP. We examined group differences in motivations and attitudes and found evidence of convergence. We also evaluated these differences using effect size statistics to determine their importance to our overall questions. Our overall conclusion is that the groups have a long history of program participation and there is little difference between them in both their motivation to participate and willingness to do so in the future.

Financial assistance for cover cropping through the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) has increased more than twentyfold in the past decade and a half. Available support for cover cropping increased further due to the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides significant funding for climate smart practices. In this study, we examine whether increases in available financial assistance lead to significant increases in producer participation in EQIP for cover cropping and whether these increases are additional on the landscape. We focus on the impacts of the National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI), which provides funding for cover crops and several other practices to producers in targeted watersheds on top of normal EQIP levels. We first estimate the impacts of NWQI on enrollment in EQIP using a watershed‐level panel of acres enrolled in EQIP for cover crops. We find that NWQI more than triples EQIP cover crop acreage compared to similar control watersheds. Driving the increase in enrolled acreage is a small increase in the share of applications receiving a contract, as well as a significant increase in the total number of applications received. We then utilize field‐level administrative data on cover cropping to estimate the impact of NWQI on cover crop adoption overall. We find evidence that the impacts of NWQI on cover cropping are largely additional.

This paper presents an application of matching on propensity score to evaluate the impact of the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) on farmers' willingness to participate in the United States Department of Agriculture Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP). One goal of the CBP is to reduce agricultural nutrient loadings to Chesapeake Bay. Achievement of this goal will require increased farm adoption of conservation practices to limit and reduce the levels of residual nutrients the bay. One expectation of this investigation is that the CBP's agricultural related research and educational outreach programs directed to the farm community has a positive effect on farmers' willingness to enroll in conservation programs. Furthermore, the CBP funding to support county watershed technicians who assist farm operators with adoption of conservation practices is expected to also have a positive impact on farmers' willingness to enroll in EQIP. EQIP is the leading federal conservation program for cost-share funding for structural, vegetative, and land management practices to reduce agricultural non-point source pollution. The study is limited in scope. The analysis is conducted over one state, Pennsylvania, and analyzes the impact of the CBP only on one program, EQIP. The study is not presented as a comprehensive evaluation of the CBP's impact on all farm conservation programs administered within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. However, the estimation method used for this study can be extended to other farm conservation programs.

The state and local governments are implementing emissions trading systems and carbon neutral policies to reduce greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the Earth is facing a climate crisis due to the increase in greenhouse gases generated from energy generation, steel and chemical industries, energy in the home and transportation, industrial processes such as cement, agriculture, and waste. The number of cases of youth and future generations filing climate lawsuits in the Constitutional Court and courts regarding the climate crisis is increasing, and the issue of guaranteeing basic climate rights under the Constitution is becoming a social issue.&#x0D; Therefore, a public legal response is urgently needed so that the state and local governments can protect the lives, bodies, and property of citizens in order to respond to the climate crisis and achieve sustainable development, and guarantee the right of current and future generations to live in a pleasant environment.&#x0D; In this paper, after examining the concept of climate crisis and Korea's climate crisis response legislation, we review legislative precedents and precedents in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France to find implications for Korea. In addition, the provisions on climate crisis response are stipulated in the Constitution, guaranteeing basic climate rights to protect against damage caused by climate change, the role of the Climate Crisis Response Act, climate crisis response and cooperation through cooperative climate governance, and the freedom of the current generation to respond to the climate crisis. We review the role of public law by discussing emergency declarations and public law issues in response to the crisis of climate change, guaranteeing future generations' temporal climate crisis protection rights, and protecting future generations.&#x0D; For climate protection and response to the climate crisis, the Constitution should specify climate change reduction goals, basic climate rights, and cooperative measures to respond to the climate crisis, and legislatively consider the “urgent need” of the climate crisis beyond the concept of climate protection. In addition, in order to ensure equity and fairness due to infringement of basic rights related to the climate crisis, basic climate rights should be guaranteed under the constitution as well as legislative, scientific, and judicial responsibilities. In addition, the Climate Crisis Response Act should be enacted on necessary measures to make the climate crisis effective by public law. The Climate Crisis Response Act shall be guided and complementary in relation to the Building Act, the National Territory Planning Act, the Economic Act, the Disaster Safety Act, etc., and shall prescribe clear legal responsibility and due process for the climate crisis. In addition, climate crisis response requires cooperation by establishing climate governance between the state and local governments, between local governments, and between countries, so climate change reduction technologies and climate crisis response strategies should be shared, and legal countermeasures should be prepared in cooperation with each other. In addition, in order to reasonably allocate the cost burden of the climate crisis, the right to protect the temporal climate crisis should be clearly established legally and systematically to lead a life in a comfortable environment in accordance with the principle of equity and proportionality for current and future generations. The state or local government's climate emergency declaration and emergency plans on climate change crises and risks, administrative measures under executive orders, scientific predictions of climate crises and improve the vulnerability of disasters, and the role and legal responsibility of responding to climate crises should be considered in public law.

Mental health and climate change: tackling invisible injustice

Climate change is increasingly being framed as a “climate crisis.” Such a crisis could be viewed both to unfold in the climate system, as well as to be induced by it in diverse areas of society. Following from current understandings of modern crises, it is clear that climate change indeed can be defined as a “crisis.” As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5oC special report elaborates, the repercussions of a warming planet include increased food insecurity, increased frequency and intensity of severe droughts, extreme heat waves, the loss of coral reef ecosystems and associated marine species, and more. It is also important to note that a range of possible climate-induced crises (through, e.g., possible increased food insecurity and weather extremes) will not be distributed evenly, but will instead disproportionally affect already vulnerable social groups, communities, and countries in detrimental ways. The multifaceted dimensions of climate change allow for multiple interpretations and framings of “climate crisis,” thereby forcing us to acknowledge the deeply contextual nature of what is understood as a “crisis.” Climate change and its associated crises display a number of challenging properties that stem from its connections to basically all sectors in society, its propensity to induce and in itself embed nonlinear changes such as “tipping points” and cascading shocks, and its unique and challenging long-term temporal dimensions. The latter pose particularly difficult decision-making and institutional challenges because initial conditions (in this case, carbon dioxide emissions) do not result in immediate or proportional responses (say, global temperature anomalies), but instead play out through feedbacks among the climate system, oceans, the cryosphere, and changes in forest biomes, with some considerable delays in time. Additional challenges emerge from the fact that early warnings of pending so-called “catastrophic shifts” face numerous obstacles, and that early responses are undermined by a lack of knowledge, complex causality, and severe coordination challenges.

Since the early 1990s, atrazine concentration exceeding the drinking water standard of 3 μg L⁻¹ (parts per billion) in US drinking water supplies has been identified as a costly and major water quality concern. Atrazine levels in Columbus, Ohio, tap water reached 8.74 μg L⁻¹ in the early 1990s, leading to a watershed-based approach aimed to reduce elevated atrazine concentrations. In 1999, a special Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was implemented in the watershed that feeds Hoover Reservoir, the primary drinking water supply for Columbus, Ohio. Through EQIP, the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) offered financial incentives to farmers and operators to apply alternative pesticide management practices in an effort to reduce atrazine concentrations in the reservoir and maintain the concentrations below the drinking water standard. Monthly reservoir atrazine concentrations measured from 1985 through 2005 represent three distinct time periods with respect to atrazine management: no label restrictions (1985 to 1992), post label restrictions (1993 to 1998), and post label restrictions plus EQIP implementation (1999 to 2005). Significant (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05) reductions in mean monthly reservoir atrazine concentrations were noted between all three time periods: no label restrictions (2.27 μg L⁻¹) &gt; post label restrictions (1.99 μg L⁻¹) &gt; post label restrictions plus EQIP implementation (1.18 μg L⁻¹). Regression analyses indicated that May through June precipitation and hectares enrolled in the EQIP pest management practice (Natural Resource Conservation Service Practice 595) were the two most important predictors of reservoir atrazine concentration. Additionally, for every dollar spent on the NRCS 595 pest management practice cost shared through the EQIP program, a US$2.73 benefit for the City of Columbus was realized through reduced drinking water treatment costs to remove atrazine. For farmers and operators, atrazine is an economically viable and effective herbicide for corn production. This study indicates that annually eliminating atrazine application on approximately 16% of the crop production acres may reduce and maintain reservoir atrazine concentrations below drinking water thresholds.