Correlates of the adoption of soil conservation practices by Iowa farmers

Factors important to farmers\u27 differential adoption of soil conserving practices have been well studied. But one factor that has received surprisingly little attention is the tenure status of the operator i.e., whether an owner-operator, part-owner, or tenant. The few studies that have tested for the importance of tenure have often reached contradictory conclusions. The present study tests for differences in the relative adoption of soil conservation practices by three tenure groups;Three measures of adoption--behavioral adoption, psychological adoption of recommended mechanical plans, and psychological adoption of recommended vegetative plans--were used in this study. Farm operators were classified into three tenure groups i.e., owners, part-owners, and tenants. The hypotheses about factors important to adoption were first tested for all operators, and then separately for each tenure group. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses were made;Tenure status was found to be important in the way that five factors (i.e., education, farm size, debt level, off-farm work, and number of implemented practices) affected adoption. The proportion of the variance in conservation adoptions was only 12% to 13% for all farmers, but jumped to 24% to 55% for owner operators, 9% to 20% for part-owners, and 35% to 76% for tenants. It was also found that the correlates of conservation adoption found for all farmers differ from those identified for specific tenure groups