Precision conservation: A geospatial decision support tool for optimizing conservation and profitability in agricultural landscapes

The USDA Farm Bill conservation programs provide landowner incentives to remove less productive and environmentally sensitive lands from agricultural production and reestablish them in natural vegetation (e.g., native grasses, trees, etc.) to achieve conservation objectives. However, removal of arable land from production imposes an opportunity cost associated with loss in revenue from commodities that otherwise would have been produced. Recent Farm Bills have increasingly emphasized targeted practices to achieve specific environmental outcomes that maximize environmental benefits relative to cost. The Habitat Buffers for Upland Birds practice (CP-33) under the continuous Conservation Reserve Program is an example of a targeted conservation practice that has produced measureable outcomes (increased bobwhite and grassland bird populations) with relatively minor changes in primary land use. However, establishing conservation buffers on profitable farmland may be incompatible with the economic objectives of landowners/producers. Precision agriculture technologies provide a powerful conservation planning tool for identifying environmental and economic opportunities in agricultural systems. Precision implementation of conservation practices, such as CP-33, is the foundation of strategic conservation planning and is essential for optimization of environmental and economic benefits. Toward this end, we developed a geospatial decision support tool (Arc GIS tool) to inform this decision-making process. We illustrate the geoprocessing workflow of the tool and demonstrate the conditions under which precision implementation of conservation practices can concomitantly increase whole-field profitability and environmental services for an example farm in Mississippi.