Potential Use of the Conservation Security Program to Encourage Diverse Crop Rotations in Eastern South Dakota

A central concern in many discussions of ecological sustainability in agricultural regions of the U.S. Midwest and Great Plains is that of crop system diversity. Many factors have contributed to the loss of crop system diversity over that last half-century (Dumke and Dobbs), one of which is public policy. The U.S. Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (\u272002 Farm Bill\u27) provided for a new agri-environmental program that could have potential to help restore some of the crop system diversity that has been lost. The Conservation Security Program (CSP) is that program. This report, drawn from a Master of Science in Economics thesis by one of us (Streff), contains results of an examination of the CSP\u27s potential to help induce more crop system diversity in southeastern South Dakota (SD)