To address the negative impacts and enhance the positive outcomes that some farming practices can have on natural resources, policymakers have both increased conservation program funding and shifted its emphasis.

Though farmers may be induced by conservation program payments to change their farming practices, it is difficult to link their actions to outcomes, because they take place within a larger set of complex interactions.

Farmers’ conservation choices vary with farm, household, and environmental characteristics.

Local economies with high levels of enrollment in land retirement programs lose farm-related jobs in the short-term, but, over time, add jobs as they adjust to new business opportunities.

Environmental regulations and incentives that simultaneously address multiple media, like air and water, are more likely to be cost-effective in meeting resource quality goals.

Environmental credit trading is a market-based approach to complying with environmental regulations that could achieve pollution abatement goals at lower costs to society.