Public and private economic benefits of adopting conservation tillage for cotton pollination

Enhancing pollinator communities and the services they provide within agricultural landscapes is a global priority. Despite the advantages of floral strips or hedgerows as part of pollinator habitat enhancement efforts, opportunity costs incurred by removing land from agricultural production can outweigh the benefits of enhanced pollination to remaining crops. Conservation tillage is a practice that has the potential to improve habitat while maintaining agricultural productivity. By leaving soil largely undisturbed, conservation tillage could improve nesting habitat for ground nesting bees within fields, as well as provide source habitat for pollinators foraging in neighboring habitat. Cotton, a crop of tremendous national and global value, benefits from insect pollination, but has the lowest adoption of conservation tillage of any major US crop. In this study, we focus on the cotton-growing community of Refugio County, Texas to estimate the effect of conservation tillage on key pollinators, quantify the resulting changes in pollination limitation, and partition benefits to private and external beneficiaries. We find that for every 1% adoption of conservation tillage, we see a county-wide benefit of roughly $16,000 USD. Assuming the costs of adopting conservation tillage are low, we demonstrate that the benefits are largely private, accruing collectively to owners instead of neighboring farms. Interestingly, even with 100% conservation tillage, our modeling shows that the county would still suffer lost revenue due to inadequate pollination, indicating a role for additional pollinator habitat enhancement efforts. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that growers can cost-effectively enhance habitat and alleviate pollen limitation, increasing crop yield and farmer income, without removing land from cultivation.