Conservation Use and Quality of Life in a Rural Community: An Extension of Goldschmidt's Findings

Agricultural conservation offers environmental benefits to farm families and others in the community as well as those living downstream. Studies of farmer conservation behavior have concluded that Best Management Practice adoption is not explained by innovation-diffusion, rational choice and farm structure models alone. As suggested by findings from the Sugar Creek Watershed, additional factors contribute to a land owner’s motivation for implementing conservation practices that go beyond economic or self-interested behavior; these motivations extend conservation behavior to social acts of stewardship where adoption takes place more often on medium-sized family farms. In this paper, Goldschmidt’s findings relating farm size and quality of life are tested in an exploratory analysis that evaluates conservation use as an indicator of quality of life. We perform this analysis by examining the relationships among the structural and social variables of farm size, enterprise type and intergenerational farm succession to ascertain their influence on land tenure. Conservation behavior and preferences for additional conservation practices, as elicited from participants through surveys, are added to the model to understand if and how they affect the discrimination of land tenure categories. Statistical analysis of these variables using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and discriminant analysis show the strength and, occasionally, directionality of these relationships, revealing a complex and interconnected reality that lends to a need for contextual explanation. Based on the conclusions of this paper, Buttel’s finding of a bimodal distribution of farm sizes, when viewed in terms of the benefits attributed to the medium-sized farms of Goldschmidt’s findings, reveal an area of concern when considering the future of conservation adoption. Introduction Agricultural Best Management Practices (BMPs) offer environmental benefits to farm families and others in the community as well as those further downstream. 1 Parker and Moore: Conservation Use and Quality of Life in a Rural Community: An Ext Published by eGrove, 2008 236 SOUTHERN RURAL SOCIOLOGY Walter Goldshmidt investigated farm size and the resulting farm structure of the community in 1 which a less equitable distribution of land is associated with more people selling their labor to large farm managers or owners thereby expanding the class system. Only farm size will be included in this analysis. Quality of life in rural communities has been tied to the embeddedness of rural residents in households and communities as well as their equitable access to land and resources. Walter Goldschmidt (1978) “discovered” these relationships expressed in farm size and quality of life in rural communities, finding that 1 communities with greater numbers of medium-sized farms show higher indices of quality of life. Lyson, Torres, and Welch (2001) recently described the need to expand Goldschmidt’s findings beyond materialist explanations to include Mills and Ulmer’s civic community framework in accounting for quality of life. While Goldschmidt (1978) and Mills and Ulmer (1946, cited in Blanchard and Matthews 2006) took different approaches to understanding quality of life, it is the goal of this paper to include both approaches in conceptualizing farm size and conservation behavior as quality of life indicators. Research findings have shown links between agricultural practices and human health regarding quality of life in toxicity studies of air and water emissions from industrial-scale animal and crop production systems (Clancy 1990; Donham and Thu 1993; Durrenberger and Thu 1996; Thu and Durrenberger 1998). Other findings link sustainability to environment and quality of life (Chiesura and de Groot 2003; Rapport, Costanza, and McMichael 1998; Stinner, Stinner, and Martsolf 1997). Researchers have demonstrated the influences of social networks on community well-being through social support (Forrester-Jones et al. 2004), care for the local environment (Lansing, Lansing, and Erazo 1998), and civic engagement (Lyson et al. 2001). Furthermore, conservation as a phenomenon has been investigated to understand the unique qualities of the people (and their farms) who choose to adopt BMPs on their land. Studies of farmer conservation behavior have concluded that adoption of BMPs is not explained by innovation-diffusion, rational choice, and farm structure models alone (Napier and Bridges 2002). Moreover, as indicated by findings from the Sugar Creek Watershed Project (Parker 2006; Parker, Moore, and Weaver 2007), additional factors (e.g., land tenure, presence of a farm heir, and social networks) contribute to an individual’s motivation for implementing conservation measures, which go beyond economic or self-interested behavior and extend conservation behavior to social or community acts of stewardship. Conservation adoption in the Sugar Creek has taken place more often on the medium-sized farms of socially embedded families. In spite of these 2 Journal of Rural Social Sciences, Vol. 23 [2008], Iss. 1, Art. 10 https://egrove.olemiss.edu/jrss/vol23/iss1/10 CONSERVATION USE AND QUALITY OF LIFE 237 findings, environmental quality is rarely used as a variable relating quality of life to farm scale, except for Buttel and Larson (1979), who emphasized environment in energy use and efficiency. Still, no studies are investigating community quality of life and conservation adoption that address Goldschmidt’s issue of farm size. This exploratory analysis seeks to extend Goldschmidt’s findings regarding the relationship between farm size and quality of life to the area of conservation adoption and attitudes. This approach conceptualizes relationships among a set of social and structural variables found in the conservation adoption literature (farm size, farm income, enterprise type, and intergenerational farm succession), as well as a conservation ethic or behavior, as related to medium-sized family farms. As interpreted from survey and interview data, farm households in the Sugar Creek Watershed that adopt BMPs generally exhibit the following qualities: they are generally medium-sized farms that have a mix of owned and leased land; these diversified farms are less integrated into larger networks of agricultural production; owners/operators predict a high level of intergenerational farm succession; and owner/operators express greater preferences for additional BMPs. Conservation behavior and attitudes and perceptions, as elicited from participants through surveys and interviews, are conceptualized as factors in assessing the local environment and community well-being in the Sugar Creek Watershed (Parker 2006; Parker et al. 2007). Implicit in this argument is that a person’s concern for local land use and ecology stems not only from altruistic feelings of “doing the right thing,” but also from that person having a cognitive model that embeds them in a local community with some aspects of a shared common vision, social networks, and concern for the local well-being of others. In this paper, positive conservation attitudes (i.e., those that have adopted BMPs and show preferences for additional conservation practices) are viewed as positive indicators of quality of life. Furthermore, positive conservation attitudes compel residents to want to improve the watershed leading to a healthier environment, and stem from concerns for community that includes human and animal health in relation to water quality. Using “conservation use” and “preferences for additional conservation practices” with the four social and structural variables related to quality of life, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and discriminant analysis modeling approach are used to describe specific aspects of land tenure by exploring the areas where farm and conservation variables interact. Discriminant analysis was chosen because the authors believe that these variables are less effectively analyzed in isolation and should be analyzed together to identify the cumulative contribution of each. The 3 Parker and Moore: Conservation Use and Quality of Life in a Rural Community: An Ext Published by eGrove, 2008 238 SOUTHERN RURAL SOCIOLOGY findings demonstrate the strength and, occasionally, directionality of these relationships, revealing a complex and interconnected reality that shows a need for qualitative explanation, which is provided by interview data. In subsequent sections of this paper, a literature review is presented, followed by a brief background of the study area to contextualize this research and a description of the methodology used. The interview, ANOVA, and discriminant analysis findings are then presented. The paper closes with a discussion of the models and a conclusion in which the broader issues of conservation and social organization in relationship to quality of life are addressed. Implications are presented for future farm household conservation adoption and potential program success. Analytical Perspective and Literature Review Since Goldschmidt published his findings, numerous scholars have examined connections between medium-sized family farms and quality of life in rural communities. A summary of the pre-1990 research is available by Lobao (1990) in which an overview of corroborating research demonstrates support for Goldschmidt’s findings. Some findings among the studies cited by Lobao (1990:57) suggest that large-scale agriculture is associated with a variety of community disorders, including: “lower levels of living” (Goldschmidt 1978; Rodefeld 1974); lower income for working class labor and increases in income inequality and poverty (Flora, Brown, and Conby 1977; Goldschmidt 1968; Heady and Sonka 1974; Rodefeld 1974; Tetreau 1940; Wheelock 1979); “greater unemployment” (Marousek 1979); decreased community services (Fujimoto 1977; Raup 1973; Swanson 1980; Tetreau 1940); decreases in “social participation and integration of commu