14pgs, While conservation practices promote soil health and reduce the negative environmental effects from agricultural production, their adoption rates are generally low. To facilitate farmer adoption, we carried out a survey to identify potential challenges faced by farmers regarding conservation tillage and cover crop adoption in the western margin of the US Corn Belt. We found farmers' top two concerns regarding conservation tillage were delayed planting, caused by slow soil warming in spring, and increased dependence on herbicide and fungicides. Narrow planting window and lack of time/labor were perceived by farmers as the two primary challenges for cover crop adoption. Some sense of place factors, including the commonly included dimensions of attachment, identity and dependence, played a role in farmers' perceived challenges. For example, respondents more economically dependent on farming perceived greater challenges. We found that farmers' challenge perceptions regarding reduced yield and lack of time/labor significantly decreased as years of usage increased, implying that time and experience could dilute some challenges faced by farmers. Our findings indicate that social network use, technical guidance and economic subsidies are likely to address the concerns of farmers and facilitate their adoption of conservation practices.
8pgs, The global trend of urbanization coupled with an increasing awareness of the importance of food systems resilience, has led to an increasing interest in urban agriculture to sustainably feed the rapidly growing urban population and mitigate against food supply chain disruptions. While home and community gardens have been long studied, there has been relatively little empirical research focused specifically on commercial urban agriculture (CUA) operations. The purpose of this study was to characterize commercial urban farms, and to identify their primary barriers to business development and expansion, their perceptions of future opportunities, and their specific informational needs. Because CUA has received relatively less attention in previous empirical research, a qualitative approach was used for this needs assessment to collect rich, contextualized information to help differentiate the specific barriers, opportunities and needs of CUA operations as opposed to their rural counterparts. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 29) of CUA producers in Florida. These interviews revealed that CUA operations face many of the same barriers that are common to establishing and growing small farms, with additional barriers due to local government regulations and tensions associated with farming on land that is not traditionally used for agriculture. Despite these difficulties, CUA operators believe their urban location is a key benefit to their operation and they see a variety of opportunities for future business and market expansion.
