ABSTRACT

This chapter considers a growing tension within agri-environmental governance (AEG) of water quality in the United States. Despite decades of study, farmers’ decision-making around the adoption of farm practices that promote environmental conservation are still not well understood, yet adoption of conservation practices is vital to reducing community level issues of environmental pollution. In the southeastern state of North Carolina, neoliberal efforts to improve water quality through market-based Water Quality Trading schemes have been enacted through a hybridized public policy mandate that established Water Quality Trading markets for private trading. This research examines how and why agricultural producers in Jordan Lake watershed, North Carolina, make decisions about these types of voluntary adoption of conservation practices. Drawing upon qualitative research with 90 farmers, our aim is to re-frame the engagements of the state, private traders, and agricultural stakeholders as complex assemblages. By viewing farmer decision-making as complex assemblages, we propose that incongruities are to be expected and gains in water quality will come from diversifying outreach and implementation programs from the beginning to increase the number of early adopters and hasten the overall pace of adoption and diffusion of conservation practices over farmers’ social networks.