Does Crop Insurance Participation Affect Cover Crop Adoption?

AAEA members release new research in AEPP

Cover crops are steadily becoming a major policy focus to address environmental effects from farming and even as a tool to mitigate rising atmospheric carbon. The Build Back Better Act proposed by the Biden administration contains language specifically aimed at encouraging adoption of cover crops by farmers.

In the new article “Crop insurance participation and cover crop use: Evidence from Indiana county‐level data” published in the Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Lawson Connor from Louisiana State University, Roderick Rejesus from North Carolina State University and Mahmut Yasar from the University of Texas at Arlington, find out if crop insurance participation affect cover crop adoption.

Connor says, “Our results suggest that crop insurance reduces cover crop use but the impact is economically small. The results therefore imply that moving forward focusing policy attention toward studying, strengthening, and/or implementing other policy mechanisms (e.g., more targeted conservation payment programs) has a better chance to more immediately impact cover crop uptake. Efforts to reduce the impact of crop insurance on cover crop adoption are likely to only generate a minor immediate increase in cover crop usage.”

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ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes two journals, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit www.aaea.org.

Contact: Allison Ware
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