An important issue with regard to the overall effectiveness of conservation-tillage practices in reducing the impact of agricultural production on the environment concerns what happens to energy, pesticide and fertilizer use as these practices are more extensively adopted. To gain some insight...

The specific inputs considered, in addition to energy, are labor, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, pesticides, and water. The results show that input use is responsive to variations in own prices and that some limited substitution does occur between energy, labor, and nitrogen fertilizer.