ANGOLA, Ind. — Economics should be a factor in making decisions regarding the use of conservation practices on the farm, but shouldn’t be the only consideration, a Purdue University professor said recently.

"There are some decisions you can make on the basis of economics, but many you can’t; and I think these conservation decisions are some of those," said Otto Doering, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue. "Does economics rule or do economics have a role? I think it should have a role but not rule."

There are several economic factors to think about when considering the addition of conservation practices, including rental agreements, commodity prices and government programs, Doering noted. Management time is also a key concern. "Running a farm operation full-time is 24-7 and the thing you’re shortest on is management time," he explained. "Today, something like cover crops takes some serious management time. The resistance to doing something like that isn’t so much dollars and cents but that management time."

Doering spoke March 24 during the Tri-State Conservation Farming Expo in Angola. About 200 attended the event.

In addition to doing what’s best solely for the farm, producers have to worry about factors such as how their decisions might impact others in the watershed or may be seen by those not involved in farming, Doering stated. "The perceptions of those who don’t know much about agriculture become very important in making decisions. How do you work with the perceptions of others who may have a perception of what you do that isn’t accurate?"

Solving a problem in agriculture, whether it’s how to best manage a single farm or eliminating the toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, has become more complicated as additional voices want to be heard, he said. In the past, there would have been a clear definition of an issue and an explanation from experts about what needed to be done. "Today, there’s no agreement on what the problem is," he noted. "And every time you think you have a handle on it, it wriggles away. Stakeholders are likely to have differing ideas about what the real problem is and what its causes are. When we do get to a solution, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what to do. Goals are negotiated and not determined analytically. Experts are not allowed by stakeholders to dictate the desired outcome."

Conservation these days focuses in part on soil health, resilience and sustainability, Doering said. "The question is, how do you measure those things? Everyone is arguing about that. Do we measure healthy soils because they give us more dollars? When you’re making a conservation decision you have more than one metric to worry about. You’re not thinking just about dollars."

The situation with the toxic algae blooms on Lake Erie has attracted the scrutiny of those both in and outside of agriculture, said Carrie Vollmer-Sanders, director of the Western Lake Erie Basin Project for The Nature Conservancy. "Lake Erie is the fishbowl and a lot of people are looking at it," she explained. "Can we do what’s right for agriculture and business and water quality in such a way that others may replicate it?"

In August 2014, the water supply in Toledo, Ohio, was contaminated, apparently by toxins from algae found in Lake Erie. Residents were told not to drink water from the city’s water treatment plant for two days. Phosphorous runoff from farm fields has been cited as one factor in the presences of the blooms.

"Can we turn Lake Erie around? We did it once in the 1970s," she stated. "But we may make a change tomorrow, and it may not have an impact on the lake for a couple of years. We need to have both agriculture and clean water for the city of Toledo and the city of Fort Wayne."