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Successes and Challenges for the Role of Extension in Promoting the Adoption of Conservation Practices: The Case of Beef Cattle Producers Participating in a Climate-Smart Agriculture Program

Nathan Smith, Anastasia Thayer, Matthew Fischer, Nikolas Berg, and Maggie Miller

Summary

Climate-smart agricultural practices are suggested to increase climate change mitigation efforts while providing other environmental benefits. Multiple conservation practices on beef cattle forage systems have been shown to not only decrease agricultural emissions but also increase climate resilience and improve farming operations.
We provide an overview of results and impacts of a USDA NRCS Climate-Smart program incentivizing the adoption of conservation practices for beef cattle producers. Extension provided training for producers on these conservation practices. Extension associates and agents then met one-on-one with the producers to make recommendations and verify practice. Adoption rates after the first year are shown with estimated economic benefits and costs. As part of the program, 78 enrolled beef cattle producers responded to survey questions on the source of education and perceived accuracy of the information at the time of program enrollment and after the first year of program enrollment. Specifically, producers were asked questions to indicate their sources of agricultural production information, the number of times they interacted with Extension agents, and the accuracy of agricultural production information from various sources. A key component of the program is access to educational information and one-on-one outreach efforts. To investigate the impact of this information, we explore the producer’s reported sources of information about the practices themselves, such as legume to plant and litter application rate.
The results inform and help improve other outreach and education efforts to increase conservation practice adoption for beef cattle producers not enrolled in the climate-smart program.

Details

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