While there is a lot of enthusiasm about the income that farmers could potentially earn by participating in sustainability markets, there are also costs associated with adopting these practices.

Some of these costs are ex­­plicit cash expenses, such as buying cover crop seeds or adopting new tillage systems, while others are trade-offs that force a farmer or rancher to give up something to participate. 

Explicit cash expense barriers associated with adopting conservation practices come in the form of input costs, variable costs and fixed costs. A change to a farm or ranch operation could increase costs associated with the operation, depending on the conservation practice adopted. 

For example, as reported by...