ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the utility of all that technical information in making public choices among ways to influence private choices in adoption of conservation tillage. Soil conservation policy, including policy for conservation tillage, includes a broad range of social, political and economic techniques that influence the rights, obligations and opportunities of farmers whose actions affect soil erosion. Each legal option in a particular decision carries certain predictable consequences, including impacts on parties outside the farm enterprise. Reordering the rights and obligations of farmers in the interest of reducing erosion, run-off and the multi-media transport of pollutants is both legally and politically acceptable. The governmental balance of power in soil conservation policy has definitely been someplace very close to the county. Perhaps a joint US-Canada panel on soil erosion, to establish an information exchange and an action process for implementation would be valuable, outside of those government agencies with the mission to implement a particular set of policies.
