Location: Southeast Watershed Research
Project Number: 6048-13000-028-079-R
Project Type: Reimbursable Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jan 1, 2025
End Date: Dec 31, 2029
Objective:
Objectives of this project include: 1) A biophysical assessment of trade-offs between prevailing practices and alternative practices that provide economic benefits to producers, 2) Analyze and compare economic feasibility of prevailing and alternative cover cropping systems at the farm level, 3) Provide an integrated modeling approach to determine tradeoffs across ecosystem services under different cover cropping systems at both the farm and regional levels, 4) Determine long-term trends related to the adoption of alternative cover cropping practices among producers, and 5) Based on our modeling efforts, build tools housed on interactive online platforms that inform both producers and researchers of ecosystem services tradeoffs and economic benefits under different cover cropping systems. Ultimately, these will culminate into a research hub that upholds and builds on these efforts to support rural stakeholders and optimize their system productivity, both economically and biophysically.
Approach:
The multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional team consists of members with broad ranging skillsets. Data collection, integration, modeling, and application development in the form of a hands-on tool will be implemented by the team. Team members represent biophysical and economic/social sciences, with relevant research experience in agricultural sciences. Additionally, team members are heavily involved in extension and education to help bring our resulting tools to the hands of those who will find them most useful: producers, extension agents, and educators across the K-12 and university spectrum. Specifically, ARS will contribute to the collection and summary of datasets needed for the assessment of trade-offs between prevailing and alternative practices. Researchers from ARS will also contribute to the analysis of data on the adoption of alternative cover cropping practices at regional levels.