National water quality concerns are creating momentum for legislation that takes a proactive stance toward agricultural practices involving agrichemicals. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency has asked the states to design appropriate non-point source pollution policies. This article examines the issues involved in two ways. First, it reviews the literature on previous conservation policies and discusses the implications for stricter regulation. Second, in order to determine the public opinion context for non-point source pollution policies, it examines the responses of a (...) sample of Oklahoma rural leaders to a set of environmental, water quality, political, economic, and family farm orientation items developed in previous surveys. The analysis considers areas of agreement and disagreement related to socio-economic status, education, and extent of involvement in farming. It concludes that although Oklahoma's rural leaders are concerned about water quality problems, an environmentally-sound formulation of rural values has yet to develop. The most serious obstacle appears to be the perceived threat of environmental regulations to the variability of production agriculture. (shrink)

Gender differences in knowledge of NRM practices have long been noted in Senegal and throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. An exploration of these differences among a sample of rural Senegalese men and women shows that these differences are, in part, a function of extension agent interventions. The level of knowledge of a set of NRM technologies is associated with contact with three key types of extension agent in rural Senegal: extension team leaders, forestry agents, and women's agents. Analysis of intra-household variation in (...) levels of knowledge shows a degree of interdependence between the knowledge levels of husbands and wives for some practices. However, multi-variate analysis, controlling for personal and contextual factors, clearly demonstrates the independent impact of extension agents on gender differences in rural Senegalese NRM knowledge. It can be concluded that contact with extension agents increases knowledge of NRM practices. In particular, contact with the women's agent is a strong predictor of the level of women's NRM knowledge and, surprisingly, also contributes to the level of men's knowledge. Despite the small number of women's agents in the field, they appear to have significant positive impact on the dissemination of NRM knowledge among rural Senegalese women and men. (shrink)