Making Conservation Conventional
Perspectives from a behavioral design process with farmers in the midwestern United States
Sand County Foundation is a U.S.-based, non-profit conservation organization dedicated to working with private landowners to advance ethical and scientifically-sound land management practices that benefit people and the environment. Because most of the land in the U.S. is privately owned, Sand County Foundation believes private landowners hold the keys to meaningful environmental improvement. The land management decisions of farmers, ranchers, foresters, and other private landowners directly affect the quality of our food supply, the health of our soil, the quality and quantity of our water, and the habitat for most of the nation’s wildlife.
A challenge, recognized throughout agriculture, is gaining wider adoption of conservation practices on these private lands. We generally know what works: treating each farm and farmer as unique, small groups of farmers working together, field days, word of mouth, peer-learning, whole-farm planning; and we know what does not: government mandates, telling farmers what to do, offering generalized recommendations, overly large groups.
The question for Sand County Foundation, though, was why? To work through a disconnect observed in the practice of conservation education — frustration by conservation professionals in the slow adoption of practices considered obvious opportunities for farmers — and their work with numerous innovative, creative landowners, Sand County Foundation connected with GRID Impact.
Through a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, the Sand County Foundation and GRID Impact joined forces to dig into our own biases, explore cognitive biases and obstacles we saw in conservation adoption, and build prototype concepts to share with farmers to determine if we could break through the conservation adoption wall. Together, we identified a potential way forward — an approach to the adoption of conservation practices that is rooted in the experiences, contexts, and ideas of landowners in the Sand County Foundation network. The solution can be found, at least in part, by working with the farmers themselves, those whose work is most impacted by these changes in climate and soil and water quality.
Behavioral design provides a strategy to systematically understand a lived context. Then, equipped with this understanding, we as designers and program managers are able to more intentionally engineer the details and features of our conservation programs, ensuring that these programs are tailored to the specific contexts of the farmers whom we are trying to influence. These tailored programs are key to connecting with individuals’ needs and increasing the likelihood these programs will be sustainably adopted over time. Our work with Sand County Foundation and their partner farmers informed the creation of the following best practices:
- Show the power of conservation with a specific example: One method of making conservation farming practices salient is showing examples of farms where the practice has been implemented. Interviewees continually mentioned the power of seeing an example of a practice. They all described seeing an example of a new practice through photos, videos, farm walkthroughs, or farm field days during which a group of farmers are invited to visit one farm.
- Show the power of conservation with a (eco)systems approach: Another method of making conservation farming practices salient is showing the effect that specific farming practices have on the broader ecosystem. For example, one farmer mentioned boating, kayaking, or aviation trips to explore the effect of farming practices on given watershed areas. This farmer reflected on his own personal experience flying and explained how this perspective of one’s farm and its connection to the broader ecological system could be a tipping point for other farmers, too.
- Show, don’t tell: Whether demonstrating the importance of a conservation farming practice starts by focusing on one effective practice or by sharing a bird’s eye view of the connected ecosystem, the approach shows a farmer what is possible rather than telling them what to do.
- Start positively and identify a challenge that the farmer is facing: Our interviews with farmers informed us that connecting with the farmer’s individual needs and curiosities is an important aspect of moving into a new practice or management method. Many farmers mentioned the importance of initiating this conversation positively and opening the discussion with affirmation about the farmer’s current practices.
- Adapt to the farmer and the farm: Farmers continually described how farming demands constant adaptation. Any approach that promotes conservation farming must be adaptable, and promotion must align with the unique needs of the farmer.
- Support the farmer over time: Many farmers emphasized prioritizing connection and building relationships with each individual farmer when initiating conversations about conservation practices. Adopting conservation practices can take time, and the best strategies to apply could shift due to environmental or contextual factors. It is important that any resource that supports each farmer on their conservation journey continues the support throughout the journey.
- Who is doing the talking matters: Farmers continually mentioned the stress of distinguishing between new ideas for farming practices and people trying to sell them something.
- When farmers described this void of a trusted source of information they oftentimes also described a receptivity to advice. Many farmers emphasized that in order to trust advice about conservation farming practices, it was important that this advice comes from a source who has real experience” and is “an actual farmer.”
- Harness social norms in the farmer’s local context: Across interviews, farmers emphasized that it is hard to be different from other members of their community. It can be challenging for farmers to risk looking different from neighbors by adopting a conservation farming practice. However, once the farmer’s neighbors are implementing conservation practices, the farmer feels pressure to join. The social norms within the farmer’s context can both encourage and deter the adoption of conservation farming practices.
- Normalize perceived differences among farming practices to promote new social norms: Revealing the presence of fellow farmers implementing conservation farming practices could be a powerful intervention to encourage conservation practices among farmers. As farmers experiment they often experiment in an unseen area on their land.
- Understand that change takes time and check your own present bias: During an interview, one farmer stated, “Conservation is a slow walk, not a slap in the face.” Conservation demands patience over an extended period of time for two key reasons: implementing farming practices takes time, and changing minds and behaviors takes time.
Through the GRID Impact behavioral design process, Sand County Foundation focused on three factors as the key obstacles in farmer adoption of conservation: (1) present bias; (2) intention-action gap; and (3) social proof. We co-created “ConserVisioning”, a program intervention focused on the need to bring long-term thinking and planning to conservation, with a social network supporting the planning and execution of the conservation management. Simply put, if the farmer can only think ahead to this year’s harvest and next year’s planting, it will be difficult for them to consider long term goals, let alone figure out how to change their annual management to improve soil health.
By having a streamlined, community-appropriate list of conservation practices, it will be easier for farmers to join with neighbors in adopting new conservation practices. By focusing on the social component, long term social connections can be made, reducing the sense of isolation reported by many conservation adopters and building trust among the farmers to build out peer-to-peer programs. Creating a road map or planning tool for envisioning and achieving long term goals, will help farmers plan out short-term actionable steps to achieve long-term whole farm conservation.
The viability of these approaches and tools needs to be constantly developed, challenged, and redeveloped through a multi-year collaborative interaction with existing and piloted farmer groups.
The project is described in detail in this white paper.
