The adoption of conservation tillage practices such as ridge till, mulch till, or no-till has been shown to reduce soil erosion. An additional benefit of these conservation practices is that they also increase soil moisture. Therefore, these practices appear to be a method that agricultural producers can use to reduce their risk associated with abnormally dry or wet conditions (i.e., drought or flood). Given the large amount of money spent by the USDA on crop insurance indemnity and ad-hoc disaster relief payments, practices that reduce the risk of drought to the farmer should be strongly encouraged. Using SUR estimation with random effects, the paper uses panel data to measure the impact of extreme weather events on the adoption of conservation tillage. Panel data allows the identification of differences in adoption rates as a function of the severity of the drought or flood event. The adoption of no-till, alternative conservation tillage, and reduced till are estimated relative to conventional tillage. Both extremely dry and extremely wet conditions are found to increase the adoption of conservation tillage; while extremely wet conditions increase the adoption of both no-till and other conservation tillage practices.

这些保护措施的另一个好处是它们也增加了土壤湿度。因此，这些做法似乎是农业生产者可以用来减少与异常干旱或潮湿条件(即干旱或洪水)有关的风险的一种方法。鉴于美国农业部在作物保险赔偿和特别救灾款项上花费了大量资金，应该大力鼓励减少农民遭受干旱风险的做法。采用随机效应的SUR估计方法，利用面板数据测量极端天气事件对保护性耕作的影响。面板数据可用于确定采用率的差异，作为干旱或洪水事件严重程度的函数。相对于传统耕作方式，采用免耕、替代保护性耕作和减少耕作进行了估算。极端干燥和极端潮湿的条件都被发现会增加保护性耕作的采用;而极端潮湿的条件增加了免耕和其他保护性耕作措施的采用。