Economic incentives for South Dakota farmers to participate in the Conservation Security Program

Conservation programs have had little success commanding the attention of policymakers. They have often been criticized regarding their overall effectiveness and the actual environmental benefits that are produced. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 has brought new life to conservation and agri-environmental issues with a substantial increase in funding to develop policies that are meant to address the shortcomings of past programs.; The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate the Conservation Security Program and its likely success in causing farmers to develop longer, more sustainable crop rotations. A "representative" farm for eastern South Dakota was developed and evaluated using various rotation scenarios. The CSP was applied to the rotations and analyzed with various contract assumptions. The research showed that most of the alternative and organic rotations consistently had higher returns than the baseline rotations. However, the payment rates for the CSP might not be sufficient to cause farmers to change to longer crop rotations.