REECAP 7th Annual Meeting

Does a sense of intergenerational commitments modify farmers’ preferences for conservation tillage? Evidence from the choice experiment in Moldova

Not scheduled

20m

German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig

Using behavioral insights or economic psychology to improve food, agricultural, and agri-environmental policies Session Block

Speaker

Łukasz Kryszak

Description

The expansion of conservation tillage helps to improve soil health in countries affected by the soil erosion, such as the Republic of Moldova.There are several causes of erosion in Moldova, such as insufficient crop rotation (including a decrease in the area of legumes and fodder), deforestation, or improper tillage and fertiliser management. The area affected by erosion in Moldova is about 981,560 ha (including 135,320 ha of highly eroded soil), while the total area of arable land is about 1.7 million ha (Government of the Republic of Moldova, 2020). This means that more than half of the arable land is subject to erosion. Improving soil health has become a government priority in recent years, as evidenced by the introduction of a specific programme to ensure sustainable management of soil resources. However, conservation agriculture practices are not widespread in Moldova so far. It is practised on only about 3% of the sown agricultural area (Cojocaru et al., 2021).Assuming that implementing conservation tillage is a type of long-term pro-environmental decision, such activities can be seen as a combination of reciprocity and altruistic behaviours of farmers, and their responsibility or moral obligation towards other generations. The main objective of this paper was to investigate Moldovan farmers’ preferences for the hypothetical policy scheme designed to promote conservation tillage in the framework of a discrete choice experiment. The heterogeneity of farmers' preferences was explained using the latent concept of a sense of intergenerational commitments (IC) via a hybrid choice model. We found that farmers are reluctant to adopt more advanced forms of conservation tillage (such as zero tillage) and prefer to choose minimum tillage. They positively value financial support (both direct payments and investment subsidies), while the availability of advisory support is not the key factor. We also found that farmers with greater sense of IC have less negative attitudes toward zero tillage and put less positive value on monetary aspects. It seems that these farmers are more driven by moral obligations to society and are less dependent on external support. Policy makers should continue to develop financial incentives to promote conservation agriculture practices but they should also be aware of the important role of farmers and agricultural policy from a social justice perspective.