One federal policy, four different policy contexts: An examination of agri-environmental policy implementation in the Midwestern United States

Much research attention has been given to devolved environmental policies and variation in state adoption of environmental policies. Less attention has been paid to variation in top-down federal policies, including in the agri-environmental arena. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is the largest working land conservation program in the United States, incentivizing the adoption of conservation practices on active agricultural land through cost-share and technical assistance. While the program is federal, state offices of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are charged with implementing the program in their state. Qualitative interviews (n = 26) were conducted with NRCS personnel in four Midwestern states to explore similarities and differences between state administrative outputs. Program outputs are determined through a mixture of national, state, and local administrative processes and are driven by dissimilarities in state resource concerns and agricultural systems. The process by which farmers apply for cost-share funding through EQIP is largely the same across states, but states vary in several important outputs, especially resource and conservation practice priority, as well as state and local partnerships. Outreach methods do not tend to vary between states; NRCS districts typically rely on passive recruitment and word-of-mouth recruitment. Divergence in state EQIP outputs constitute a significant difference in the policy context in which farmers make conservation decisions in the Midwest, which has implications for research concerning farmer behavior. While federal policies implemented across the states offer some level of consistency in the setting in which individual land managers make decisions, variation may still exist in many policies that results in different policy outputs.