The extent to which individual factors influence the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is estimated using a logit model and data from a 1990 survey of West Virginia producers. The results are, as expected, different than those for conventional agricultural technologies. For example, the effects of human capital characteristics are significant, while those for structural and institutional characteristics are not. However, the likelihood of adoption of sustainable agricultural practices is affected most by the environmental characteristic of whether or not the producer is aware that ground water contamination exists on his farm. This creates an important “awareness effect” upon which policies to promote sustainable agriculture adoption can be formulated. It also implies the existence of a derived demand for sustainable agriculture.

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ii In the broader study that this study is drawn from, we hyothesize that nitrogen oxide levels would not be a significant factor since NOx is not a visible pollutant and because levels are increasing rapidly.

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The theoretical and empirical relationship between farm‐based residual returns, the opportunity cost of farmland, and farmland prices is developed. Temporal hypotheses concerning the source of land price movements are tested using a variant of Granger causality. In the aggregate, farmland prices are found to be unidirectionally “caused” by residual farm‐based returns. The findings support the hypothesis that farmland prices are determined mainly within the farm sector and lend credence to the use of extrapolative expectations processes in structural farmland price models.