Motivation and Challenges in Adopting Soil Health Practices

This repository contains the R code used in our research paper "Motivation and Challenges in Adopting Soil Health Practices," conducted by the Nebraska Healthy Soils Task Force (HSTF) and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL). The paper was published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation and can be accessed here.

🎯 Project Overview

In 2019-20, a survey was conducted to explore producers' motivation and challenges in cover crop (CC), nutrient management, and other soil health management practices across seven locations in Nebraska. The survey was completed by 275 participants, which included producers, landowners, crop consultants, university staff, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and state agencies, and other attendees.

The research primarily delved into the following areas:

• Motivation for Soil Health Practices: The most significant motivating factor in adopting soil health management practices was reducing topsoil erosion. Other major reasons were increasing soil water infiltration, organic matter, soil C, and the stewardship to sustain soil resources for future generations.

• Challenges in Cover Crop Adoption: The most significant challenge in adopting CC was a narrow window between the main crop harvest and CC planting. Input costs, including seeding, weather issues, and farm labor were also ranked high among difficulties for adopting CC.

• Fertility Management: The inclusion of legumes (soybean, alfalfa) in the rotation and manure application were the key determinants of NPK rates.

📁 Repository Content

This repository comprises all the R code used to process the survey data, analyze the results, and generate the figures featured in the paper.

🔧 How to Use

To use the code from this repository, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository to your local machine.
2. Open the project in RStudio or your preferred R environment.
3. Install the necessary R packages that the scripts depend on.
4. Run the scripts as needed.

⚠️ Please note that the data used in this research is not included in this repository due to privacy concerns.

👥 Contributing

We welcome contributions from the community. If you wish to contribute, please fork the repository, make your changes, and submit a pull request.

📚 Citation

If you use the code from this repository, please cite our paper:

Das, S., Berns, K., McDonald, M., Ghimire, D., & Maharjan, B. (2022). Soil health, cover crop, and fertility management: Nebraska producers’ perspectives on challenges and adoption. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 77(2), 126-134.