Panel 3.1. Collective Action Around Negative Externalities in Agroecosystems
co-Chairs: Landon Yoder1, Minwoo Ahn2, Courtney Hammond Wagner3, and Pranay Ranjan4
1Indiana University, 2University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 3USDA ARS, Burlington, VT, 4Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ
The role of collective action among farmers to curtail environmental problems has been under studied. The conventional wisdom to dealing with negative externalities, such as water quality degradation, greenhouse gas emissions, or biodiversity loss, is to use regulations, especially negative financial incentives, to discourage problematic practices. In agriculture, particularly in countries where production is heavily subsidized, regulations are usually limited in scope due to their political unpopularity with farmers. Recent farmer protests across multiple European countries in response to EU climate policies for agriculture illustrate the challenges of implementing regulations. Voluntary adoption of pro-environmental management practices has been the standard approach but has not generated substantial environmental improvements. In this panel, we will explore the role that collective action among farmers, as well as their interactions with relevant stakeholders, such as agricultural extension agents and government officials, has and could play in changing the status quo on environmental degradation in agroecosystems. We will look at how collective action around negative externalities may be different from canonical approaches in the commons literature and explore different dimensions of how collective action could complement or be incorporated into existing agricultural policy.
