Economic concerns are often a driving factor when farmers decide whether to adopt conservation practices such as cover crops or diversified crop rotations, said the AGree farm policy initiative in a paper released on Wednesday. The paper called for more coordination of conservation practices with the taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance system.

As an example, the paper pointed to the recently announced USDA offer of a $5 per acre premium discount this year for land that was planted to cover crops. The Risk Management Agency’s “initiative to support cover crops in the current crop year is a positive step but much more must be done to accelerate the adoption of cover crops and other conservation practices,” it said.

Crop insurance is widely used by farmers as a way to reduce their risk of poor yields or low prices. The program costs around $10 billion a year. “Given the high enrollment and significant federal subsidization, crop insurance has the potential to drive broader adoption of agricultural conservation practices that reduce risk and provide a host of economic and ecological co-benefits, including for example, sequestering carbon and improving water quality,” said AGree.

The AGree paper, “The case for next generation crop insurance,” is available here.