Do farmers manage weeds on owned and rented land differently? Evidence from US corn and soybean farms

BACKGROUND It has been frequently argued that growers have less incentive to manage the evolution and spread of herbicide‐resistant weeds on leased than on owned land. This is because resistance management provides long‐term rather than short‐term benefits that operators may be less assured of captu...

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Published inPest management science Vol. 76; no. 6; pp. 2030 - 2039
Main Authors Frisvold, George B, Albright, Joshua, Ervin, David E, Owen, Micheal DK, Norsworthy, Jason K, Dentzman, Katherine E, Hurley, Terrance M, Jussaume, Raymond A, Gunsolus, Jeffrey L, Everman, Wesley
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chichester, UK John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 01.06.2020
Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
Subjects
adoption
Agricultural land
Agricultural practices
Agricultural production
Corn
Crop production
Crops, Agricultural
Empirical analysis
Farm management
Farmers
Farms
Glycine max
Herbicide resistance
Herbicides
Humans
Land tenure
Leasing
Masking
Multivariate analysis
Plant Weeds
Polls & surveys
resistance management
Soybeans
Statistical analysis
Weed Control
weed management
Weeds
Zea mays
United States > US
land tenure
adoption
corn
resistance management
weed management
soybeans
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Summary:BACKGROUND It has been frequently argued that growers have less incentive to manage the evolution and spread of herbicide‐resistant weeds on leased than on owned land. This is because resistance management provides long‐term rather than short‐term benefits that operators may be less assured of capturing on land they do not own. Yet, empirical evidence supporting this argument has been lacking. RESULTS This study reports on results from a large‐scale national survey of weed management and other crop production practices on US agricultural fields. Up to 11 weed management practices were compared across owner‐operated versus renter‐operated fields. Analysis of survey data from corn and soybean fields did not support the hypothesis that adoption of resistance management practices is lower on rented acres. In most instances, there were no statistically significant differences in herbicide use or weed management practices on rented versus owned land. This was true at both national and regional levels of analysis. Where there were significant differences, practices associated with greater herbicide resistance management were, as often as not, more prevalent on rented than owned land. CONCLUSIONS A useful area of future research would be to test for land tenure differences in resistance management using multivariate analysis to control for confounding effects. Unobserved farmer or land characteristics may be confounding results and masking land tenure effects. Results here, however, suggest that these other effects are dominating any obvious disincentive effects of land leasing on resistance management. Of greater concern, the adoption of key resistance management practices was low on both owned and rented land. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry Data from a large‐scale, national survey of corn and soybean fields did not support the hypothesis that adoption of resistance manage practices is lower on rented than on owner‐operated land. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry
ISSN:1526-498X
1526-4998
DOI:10.1002/ps.5737