摘要：The U.S. Department of Agriculture Area Studies Project was designed to characterizethe extent of adoption of nutrient, pest, soil, and water management practices and toassess the factors that affect adoption for a wide range of management strategies acrossdifferent natural resource regions. The project entailed the administration of a detailedfield-level survey to farmers in 12 watersheds in the Nation to gather data on agricultur-al practices, input use, and natural resource characteristics associated with farmingactivities. The data were analyzed by the Economic Research Service using a consistentmethodological approach with the full set of data to study the constraints associatedwith the adoption of micronutrients, N-testing, split nitrogen applications, green manure,biological pest controls, pest-resistant varieties, crop rotations, pheromones, scouting,conservation tillage, contour farming, strip cropping, grassed waterways, and irrigation.In addition to the combined-areas analyses, selected areas were chosen for analysis toillustrate the difference in results between aggregate and area-specific models. Theunique sample design for the survey was used to explore the importance of field-levelnatural resource data for evaluating adoption at both the aggregate and watershed levels.Further analyses of the data illustrated how the adoption of specific management prac-tices affects chemical use and crop yields.
