Adoption of Warm Season Grasses by Beef Cattle Producers in the Fescue Belt

Cattle producers in the Fescue Belt predominantly rely on cool-season grass (CSG) pastures. Supplementing CSGs with warm-season grasses (WSG) can provide economic and environmental benefits. We elicit Tennessee cattle producer willingness-to-adopt WSG using data from a hypothetical choice experiment that offered a monetary incentive to establish WSG pasture. A novel double-hurdle regression with Student-t errors was estimated using a Bayesian Hamiltonian Monte Carlo procedure. About 66% of participants were willing to convert 14%-21% of their pasture acres to WSG depending on the incentive amount. A $95/acre incentive is estimated to convert 7,631 acres to WSG, costing $0.77 million.