Journal of Environmental Management 146 (2014) 451e462

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Does multifunctionality matter to US farmers? Farmer motivations and conceptions of multifunctionality in dairy systems Rachel F. Brummel a, *, Kristen C. Nelson b, c a

Environmental Studies Program, Luther College, Decorah, IA 52101, USA Department of Forest Resources, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA c Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 23 May 2012 Received in revised form 22 July 2014 Accepted 27 July 2014 Available online 17 August 2014

The concept of multifunctionality describes and promotes the multiple non-production benefits that emerge from agricultural systems. The notion of multifunctional agriculture was conceived in a European context and largely has been used in European policy arenas to promote and protect the non-production goods emerging from European agriculture. Thus scholars and policy-makers disagree about the relevance of multifunctionality for United States agricultural policy and US farmers. In this study, we explore lived expressions of multifunctional agriculture at the farm-level to examine the salience of the multifunctionality concept in the US. In particular, we investigate rotational grazing and confinement dairy farms in the eastern United States as case studies of multifunctional and productivist agriculture. We also analyze farmer motivations for transitioning from confinement dairy to rotational grazing systems. Through interviews with a range of dairy producers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York, we found that farmers were motivated by multiple factors e including improved cow health and profitability e to transition to rotational grazing systems to achieve greater farm-level multifunctionality. Additionally, rotational grazing farmers attributed a broader range of production and non-production benefits to their farm practice than confinement dairy farmers. Further, rotational grazing dairy farmers described a system-level notion of multifunctionality based on the interdependence of multiple benefits across scales e from the farm to the national level e emerging from grazing operations. We find that the concept of multifunctionality could be expanded in the US to address the interdependence of benefits emerging from farming practices, as well as private benefits to farmers. We contend that understanding agricultural benefits as experienced by the farmer is an important contribution to enriching the multifunctionality concept in the US context, informing agri-environmental policy and programs, and ultimately expanding multifunctional agricultural practice in the US. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Multifunctional agriculture Multifunctionality Rotational grazing Farmer motivations Agricultural transition US dairy

1. Introduction 1.1. The emergence of multifunctionality as a policy concept Over the past century, the United States has seen the growth of high intensity agricultural systems (Mann, 1999) that are linked to the homogenization of the rural landscape (Brown and Schulte, 2011). This ‘productivist’ model of agriculture seeks to maximize outputs and profit (Wilson, 2007) and has contributed to both industrial productivity in agricultural systems as well as the rise of environmental problems such as soil erosion, habitat loss, and * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 563 387 1778. E-mail addresses: [email protected], (R.F. Brummel). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2014.07.034 0301-4797/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[email protected]

decreased water quality with both local and global effects (Foley et al., 2005). In response to these issues, a growing, yet still limited agricultural movement has emerged that is hypothesized to contribute greater non-production benefits than productivist agriculture, such as enhanced environmental conservation, improved rural socio-economic viability, cultural heritage, and scenic amenities. The concept of multifunctional agriculture (MFA) has gained prominence as a way to describe and promote this suite of social, environmental, and economic benefits. Most broadly, multifunctionality refers to the notion that agriculture “jointly produces” non-commodity benefits beyond the production of food and fiber (OECD, 2001). Benefits emerging from MFA are discussed primarily in terms of their contribution to the public or common good, thus highlighting the broad scale services that certain agricultural practices contribute.

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Multifunctionality has emerged as an important agricultural policy and academic concept over the past 10e15 years, though the scope of its usage has been somewhat limited. The concept was initially conceived of in the context of European Union (EU) agricultural policy as a strategy to describe the non-production goods emerging from European agriculture and ultimately protect domestic subsidies for systems that produce these “non-trade distorting” services (Freshwater, 2002; Hollander, 2004; Wilson, 2007). Subsequent examinations of multifunctionality have been influenced by this European framing and its beginnings as a strategic agricultural trade policy. In the EU, many countries have internalized the multifunctionality concept through agrienvironmental policies that provide direct payment to farmers for production of the public goods (e.g. scenic landscapes, environmental services), while US agri-environmental policies have focused more on mitigating negative externalities of agriculture (e.g. reduced water quality, soil erosion) (Baylis et al., 2008). While some are pushing for the inclusion of MFA and payment for nonproduction agricultural services in the cadre of US agricultural policy (e.g. Jordan and Warner, 2010) others question the applicability of the multifunctionality concept outside Europe and in the US, in particular (Blandford and Boisvert, 2002; Freshwater, 2002). However, scholars are working to examine the generalizability of multifunctionality to new geographic and cultural contexts such as Australia, Japan, Thailand, and New Zealand (e.g. Caron-Flinterman et al., 2010; Hollander, 2004; Holmes, 2006; Shiratani et al., 2008; Tipraqsa et al., 2007). We seek to explore the concept of multifunctionality in a US agricultural context, building on recent work (Boody et al., 2005; Freshwater, 2002; Hollander, 2004; Jordan and Warner, 2010). Despite the continued support for agri-environmental policies intended to promote agricultural multifunctionality in the EU and the US, most of these policies are voluntary conservation programs that have had uneven farmer participation (Baumgart-Getz et al., 2012; Wilson and Hart, 2000). Scholars argue that this lack of broad base adoption signals the disconnect between policy intentions and farmers' motivations, and suggest that many agrienvironmental policies are not ‘culturally sustainable’ at the farm and community-level (Burton and Paragahawewa, 2011; Wilson and Hart, 2000). Thus, to promote these broader agricultural benefits through policy, we need to understand how multifunctionality emerges from the micro-scale through farmer decision-making and farm management. Consequently, scholars have called for additional study of farm-level expressions of multifunctionality (Renting et al., 2009), as well as examination of the “evolving motivations of the actors involved” (Renting et al., 2009, pp. S155) in MFA to better understand the factors driving farmers' transitions. To date, there has been little examination of how farmers themselves conceive of multifunctionality on their farm, across the landscape, and in the public sphere, particularly in US agriculture. Thus, it is unclear whether the MFA concept is salient to US farmers and whether future policies seeking to promote multifunctionality may be relevant to how farmers think about, speak about, and make decisions about their land. In this study, we use multifunctionality as an analytical lens to examine farmers' decisionmaking and how they understand the benefits emerging from their agricultural practice. We seek to develop farm-based account of multifunctionality, working to enhance the relevance of the MFA concept across scales. Ultimately, this study contributes to conversations about ways to promote MFA, particularly in the United States. Readers may draw parallels between the concepts of multifunctionality and ecosystem services. Though these concepts are similar in examining the “functions” produced through ecosystem processes, multifunctionality is a more interdisciplinary concept.

Ecosystem services refer to the benefits that humans derive directly from ecosystem processes (Costanza et al., 1997). However, multifunctionality also includes non-ecosystem derived benefits that emerge through socio-ecological relationships e in this case in an agricultural setting e such sense of community and enhanced quality of life. For example, our work and the work of others have demonstrated that farmers practicing rotational grazing report improved well-being under a rotational grazing system (Undersander et al., 2002). This improved well-being does not come directly from ecosystem processes, but is linked to the social, economic, behavioral, and ecological aspects that emerge from rotational grazing systems. Multifunctionality continues to be a focus of agricultural research and policy and has greater conceptual relevance for our research. 1.2. Multifunctionality in rotational grazing and confinement dairy Our study examines farmer conceptions of MFA in rotational grazing (RG)1 and confinement dairy farms in three states in the eastern United States. In RG systems, farmers rotate livestock through pastures to maximize pasture yield and grazing efficiency, as well as to diminish the impact of animals on the soil and vegetation. RG has emerged most strongly in the past three decades in the eastern United States, though confinement-based dairy is still the dominant form of dairy production. The archetypical model of confinement dairy production has distinct animal diet and land-use practices from RG. For example, confinement operations have more land in crops that serve as feed for cows or at least rely on croplands as a source of grain for their cattle. This land-use difference (i.e. more pasture in RG systems and more cropland in confinement systems) has implications for environmental services. In particular, grazing farms may contribute to improved soil and water conservation (Boody et al., 2005; Digiacomo et al., 2001; Randall, 2001; Sovell et al., 2000), support enhanced biodiversity through providing habitat for grassland birds (Paine et al., 1995), and enhance stream habitat for fish and macro invertebrates (Lyons et al., 2000; Raymond and Vondracek, 2011; Vondracek et al., 2005). Research also indicates that RG systems may promote social and economic benefits such as improved profitability (Taylor and Foltz, 2006), enhanced quality of life (Aschmann and Cropper, 2007), and improved human and cow health (Undersander et al., 2002). Further, previous work on dairy production in Scotland finds links between the multifunctionality of dairy farms and their ultimate technical efficiency, suggesting that greater multifunctionality positively affects individual farm management outcomes (Barnes, 2006). Despite growth in intensive grazing systems, rotational grazing dairy operations are uneven and arguably stalled on the broader landscape; between 10 and 26% of dairy operations practice RG in our study regions (Nott, 2003; PATS, 2007; Winsten et al., 2010). Confinement dairy is the most widely practiced system of dairy production in the US and provides tangible benefits to the farmers who practice it. Confinement dairy farmers have the capacity to closely monitor, control, and supplement cow nutrition and thus generally produce more milk per cow than RG dairy farmers (Hafla et al., 2013). Also, there is social and economic momentum surrounding confinement dairy due in part to the strong market infrastructure that supports confinement systems and the

1 Rotational Grazing (RG) is also commonly described as Management Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG) or management intensive grazing. We consider these terms interchangeable, but will use rotational grazing (RG) for the purposes of this article.

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efficiencies that confinement dairy produces. We acknowledge RG and confinement dairy farms as discussed here are ideal types2 and indeed many farms are hybrids of the RG and confinement types. However, we explore farms on the ends of the dairy production spectrum, examining RG dairy as a case study of multifunctional agriculture and confinement dairy as a case study of productivist agriculture. In particular, we are interested in farmers that have made the transition from confinement to RG dairy production. 1.3. Previous research on farmer motivations, agricultural transition, and farm-level conceptions of multifunctionality While theories of agricultural decision-making traditionally have relied upon models of individual economic rationality, we join other scholars (e.g. Lamine, 2011; Nelson et al., 2013; Renting et al., 2009; Sutherland et al., 2012; Wilson, 2007) examining agricultural transition as a complex, non-linear process with multiple social, political, and environmental influences. Empirical research supports this more complex view of agricultural transition. Previous work identifies multiple factors driving farmers' transition toward multifunctional agricultural systems, most often in the context of transition from conventional to organic forms of agricultural production. This research has found that economic motivations may be relevant to farmers deciding whether to transition to strongly multifunctional agricultural practices, but that personal motivations and broader societal norms also shape decision-making. For example, a study of Dutch dairy farmers found that the external normative pressure of the popular environmentalism in Dutch society influenced farmers' decisions to convert to organic, which was broadly believed to be a more sustainable form of agriculture (Smit et al., 2009). These farmers acted upon Dutch cultural conceptions of what the agricultural landscape should look like, commenting that the pasturing practices that accompany organic dairy is effectively their “license” to practice dairy in the Netherlands. Similarly, Lamine's (2011) work highlights social pre-conditions e for example, the collective dynamics amongst local farmers in a given region e as critical to enhancing transitions to organic agriculture. In Australia, Lockie and Halpin (2005) found that organic producers were more motivated by concerns for chemical safety, food quality, environmental health, and animal health than conventional farmers. In a similar study, Didier and Brunson (2004) found that Utah ranchers were motivated to innovate their range management to enhance land stewardship, to increase the profitability of their operation, to improve interactions with governmental agencies, and to enhance relationships with the broader public. Thus across contexts, research identifies a combination of external societal demands, local social context and connectedness, personal desires for human, animal, and environmental health, and economic motivations in shaping farmers' decisions to move toward strong MFA practices. Fewer studies move beyond motivations to examine how farmers understand and experience multifunctionality within their particular agricultural system. Hollander's (2004) work touched on this issue by investigating the relevance of the multifunctional agriculture concept for sugar farmers and sugar production in south Florida. Like others, Hollander acknowledges that MFA was derived within a distinct European context that emphasizes the long cultural and ecological history of agriculture

2 “Ideal types” are a sociological approach to constructing social phenomena in terms of consistent and defining characteristics. Analysts understand ideal types not as a complete reflection of reality, but as a useful construct for comparing social phenomena, in this case, farm management types.

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on the European landscape, as well as the specific political motivation to protect European agriculture from globalization and trade liberalization policies. Despite these contextual differences, she found that the lived-experience of sugar farmers in Florida offered evidence for a form of multifunctionality where sugar production provided ecological functions and contributed to local economy, livelihood, and employment. This research suggests that multifunctionality has the potential to be applicable to US agriculture and salient to US farmers, but that multifunctionality understood within a US context may deviate from European framings of the concept. Moreover, while there may be broad unifying elements of MFA, the concept also should be understood and explored contextually. 1.4. Research approach and objectives With our study, we take a view from the farm and examine multifunctionality as an emergent property of farmer decisionmaking and agricultural management. To avoid artificially limiting our examination, we use the OECD (2001) definition of multifunctionality e as that which embraces and promotes all commodity and non-commodity goods and services emerging from agricultural practice e as the starting point for our examination because this represents multifunctionality in the broadest sense. Our goal, then, is not to validate any of the many existing definitions of multifunctionality (see Cahill, 2001; Van Huylenbroeck et al., 2007), but to deepen our understanding and expand our working definition of multifunctionality through a grounding in agricultural practice. Thus, we provide an empirical examination of multifunctionality by asking: In what ways is the multifunctionality concept salient to how farmers make decisions about their farm and how they perceive the benefits emerging from their farm? This broad question frames our research and drives our desire to examine farmer-derived understandings of multifunctionality in the United States. Three objectives underlie this overarching question: 1) To interrogate our analytical distinction between confinement dairy as representing a productivist agricultural model and rotational grazing as a multifunctional agricultural model, we first examine confinement dairy farmers' perceptions of the benefits emerging from their farm. We ask: How do confinement dairy farmers understand the benefits emerging from their farm and confinement agricultural practice? 2) We then set aside confinement dairy to examine the degree to which farmers were motivated by multifunctionality in their transition to RG dairy. We ask: What are the primary motivations driving farmers to transition from productivist models of agriculture (confinement dairy) to more multifunctional agricultural systems (rotational grazing dairy)? 3) Next, we seek to construct a farm-based view of multifunctionality through examining farmers' perceived benefits of rotational grazing dairy production. How do RG dairy farmers conceive of multifunctionality on their farm? What are the primary elements of farmers' conceptions of multifunctionality? Finally, because of the burgeoning interest in the implications of multifunctional agricultural practice on environmental conservation (see Boody et al., 2005; Jordan and Warner, 2010; Laurentius Nilsson, 2009; Swagemakers, et al., 2009), we focus on the role of conservation and environmental benefits within farmers' personal conception of multifunctionality. How, in particular, do RG dairy farmers perceive their practice contributes to environmental function? Ultimately, we explore the ways farmers' notions of multifunctionality have implications for the maintenance of grass-based

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dairy production in the US and global deliberation about agricultural multifunctionality. With the changing nature of agricultural landscapes, environmental concerns about productivist agriculture, and desires to promote multifunctional agriculture as an alternative mode of agricultural production, we seek to refine a model of multifunctionality that is connected to farmer decision-making and agricultural practice. 2. Methods This paper is part of a larger, interdisciplinary study that examines coupled human and natural systems, land-use, and multifunctionality across a spectrum of dairy producer types in 53 farms across Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York (http://mfa.umn. edu/index.htm). These states were selected to represent a geographic gradient of dairy in the eastern United States (Fig. 1). Based upon conversations with extension agricultural specialists in each state, we selected 1e4 counties from each state that were known to have rotational grazing activity. Using producer lists compiled by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and land parcel data, we identified 684 dairy farms across our study areas that had streams bordering or running through the property (a requirement for another component of this study). We sent a letter to all 684 farms, inviting them to be a part of the selection pool for the study; the letter addressed general information about the nature of the study, including that researchers would access their property with 1 day of fieldwork, learn about their management through 2e3 h of the farmer's time for an interview and walk through the farm, and offered an honorarium for their participation. In response, 160 farmers returned postcards to us, with 76 of them agreeing to be a part of the selection pool. On the card, farmers also included basic information about their operation, including number of cattle and farm management style. We chose a selection frame of farms with 30e300 cattle to keep farm size

similar across participants, to eliminate non-professional farmers or “hobby farms” from the sample, to target single family or familyoperated farms, and to prevent the sampling of larger or corporately-run concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). We organized responding farms by self-reported management type (confinement, rotational grazing) and made phone calls to schedule farm visits; if farmers did not respond after 5 calls at various times of the day, we moved on to the next farm in a randomly-sorted pile. Our initial goal was to interview 10 confinement and 10 rotational grazing farmers in each state. Our final sample had a greater proportion of confinement farmers across states, however, because the confinement sample was larger and because several of the selfreported “rotational graziers” that we visited did not intensively graze, thus we did not consider them as “rotational graziers” in our analysis. Due to selection processes, farmers in our sample may be more motivated to accept small financial incentives and have more interest in research than the broader population of dairy farmers. However, the objective of this study is to develop a rich, qualitative understanding of rotational grazing and to observe emerging patterns across states and management types. Further studies would be needed to generalize to the broader population. For the purposes of this paper, we focused specifically on indepth, semi-structured interviews with farmers and farm families that we identified as practicing rotational grazing (RG) dairy farming (n ¼ 16) and confinement dairy farming (n ¼ 32). Confinement dairy farmers were defined as those who practiced confinement dairy, where milking cows were primarily housed in barns and had little to no exposure to pastures. RG dairy farmers were defined as practicing a management intensive form of rotational grazing where their cows were moved or given new sections of pasture to graze a minimum of every 12 h and where the milking cows received 50% or more of their nutrition from pasture during the growing season. While comparing land management practices (crop-based confinement vs. pasture-based grazing) was the

Fig. 1. Map of study area and general farm locations.

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primary goal of this study, 13 of the 16 RG dairy farmers in our sample were also USDA certified organic milk producers because e as we discuss later in this paper e farmers' decisions to transition to RG systems and organic dairy often coincide. We did not purposively sample with this variable in mind, though nearly all organic dairy farmers are also graziers due to USDA organic requirements for pasturing cows. However, as there are non-land-use related aspects of being organic (e.g. no antibiotic use on cows, etc), we focus on rotational grazing as our farm management category of interest. Though this does bias our sample toward organic graziers, this is likely consistent with the co-occurrence of grazing and organic practices that exist on the broader dairy landscape in the eastern US. We provide a summary of RG and confinement farmers' key farm and demographic characteristics in Table 1. We conducted interviews e ranging between 2 and 4 h in length e with dairy farmers the summer of 2009. Interviews were qualitative, in-depth and semi-structured, and used a consistent but flexible questionnaire of open-ended and multi-part questions. The interview covered a wide range of farm management issues, including farm land-use history, factors influencing their dairy management system, the support of their farm by the broader dairy production network, and issues of individual, family, and community well-being. For RG farmers, we also asked about transitioning to RG dairy production on their farm and their perceived benefits of rotational grazing. We include a selection of interview questions relevant to this analysis in Appendix 1. We sought to interview at least the primary decision-makers on the farm, but often interviews included other members of the farm family. When the interviewees consented, we digitally recorded interviews and transcribed them verbatim (94% agreed to recording the interview). When interviewees declined to be recorded, two researchers took parallel notes that were compared, compiled, and typed up for analysis. We analyzed interview documents through an inductive method similar to the general inductive approach described in Thomas (2006) and Corbin and Strauss's (1998) grounded theory analysis. Inductive analysis seeks to derive themes, models, and concepts from raw text through an iterative process where the emergence of themes is the driver of data analysis, rather than the application of previous hypotheses and models, as is the case with deductive analysis. To do this, we first read interview text and began to code interviews using NVivo 8 for internally emphasized and repeatedly mentioned themes related to “farmer motivations”, “multifunctionality” and “farmer-identified benefits of management style”. We include a table of all coding sub-categories in Appendix 2. To best address our research questions, we analyzed similarities and differences in the perceived benefits discussed by RG dairy farmers and confinement dairy farmers. Consistent with our starting definition of multifunctionality, we coded and Table 1 Comparison of key demographic and farm characteristics across confinement and rotational grazing farmers in this study.a

Average age of primary farmer (years) Average family size living on farm Percent Married Percent Amish/Mennonite 2008 Average Gross Income 2008 Average Net Income Percent of Net/gross Income Average No. Animals: milking/total herd Average Farm Size (acres) a

Adapted from Nelson et al. (2013).

Confinement farmers (n ¼ 32)

Rotational grazing farmers (n ¼ 16)

50.6 4.5 87% 17% $419,691 $26,177 9% 90/192 302

45.4 6.1 100% 40% $300,830 $41,619 14% 81/151 327

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analyzed for multifunctionality when farmers discussed production and non-production benefits at any level as being linked to their agricultural practice (see Appendix 2). This qualitative approach allowed for the emergence of a farmer-defined version of multifunctionality unconstrained by predefined metrics or rubrics. In our results, we report the themes that emerged most strongly across interviews, using both representative quotations to support our presentation of findings and a table (Table 2) with a broader selection of quotations supporting the primary research themes. 3. Results Through our interviews with dairy farmers in the eastern United States (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York), we identified shared motivations for transitioning to rotational grazing systems among RG dairy farmers. Our work revealed differences between and consistencies within confinement and RG dairy farmers in how they envisioned benefits emerging from their agricultural practice. We begin by discussing the benefits that confinement dairy farmers see with their system of production (Table 2). For the remainder of the results, we focus on RG dairy farmers. We discuss the primary motivations that RG dairy farmers identified for transitioning from confinement to RG systems of dairy production. Finally, we discuss the benefits that RG dairy farmers viewed as linked to their agricultural practice (Table 2). 3.1. Perceived benefits in confinement dairy systems During the period of this study, milk was at a historically low price. With this financial hardship as the backdrop, many confinement dairy farmers had difficulty in identifying benefits of their farming systems (additional representative quotations in Table 2). These farmers linked having grown up on dairy farms and being familiar with the business, as well as the desire to have a farm-based lifestyle for their families as reasons for their continuing in dairy despite few associated benefits. “Right now there are very little benefits. Basically, I was used to the lifestyle. We grew up that way…it's a great place to raise a family, that's probably the biggest reason we do what we do.” (PA e Confinement Dairy Farmer) The benefits confinement dairy farmers did identify, however, were related to the operation, efficiency, and profitability of the farm. For example, many discussed how confinement systems promote efficiency in their farm management: “The confinement is very convenient for the employees… as I have developed all of my systems I have tried to make sure that we can get in and get out quickly and produce our milk in the shortest period of time possible …So that's what I like about confinement. And it's a constant…. I know I can control what happens [in the barn]” (WI e Confinement Dairy Farmer) Farmers also noted that confinement barns allow them to control the cows' environment, promoting cow comfort and wellbeing. “Well, it's cow comfort, from the calves on up…keep them comfortable in the barn and clean…[we] just try to take care of them”. (PA e Confinement Dairy Farmer) Several confinement farmers noted the challenges associated with confinement dairy production. These confinement dairy

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Table 2 Perceived benefits of confinement and rotational grazing systems as expressed by dairy farmers in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New York. Supporting Quotations Confinement Dairy Farmers Lack of Current Benefits

 I don't know if there is much for benefits. It's kind of hard the way we do it.” (NY e Confinement Dairy Farmer)  “I wouldn't say there is any advantage today…. I have been doing it for 24 years and this is the worst year I have ever experienced…. If I could sell the cows at a reasonable price right now I would probably exit the business today”. (NY e Confinement Dairy Farmer)  “Right now there are very little benefits. Basically, I was used to the lifestyle.” (PA e Confinement Dairy Farmer)

 “Confinement is very convenient for the employees… we can get in and get out quickly and produce our milk in the shortest period of time possible … And it's a constant…. I know I can control what happens.” (WI e Confinement Dairy Farmer)  “Well, [the benefit of confinement is] cow comfort, from the calves on up…keep them comfortable in the barn and clean…[we] just try to take care of them”. (Confinement Dairy Farmer e PA)  “I'm hearing more and more that cows should be loose all the time…but they don't understand how cows think: cows want to be safe…[graziers] put them out in the middle of winter when our cows are cozy in the barn, sleeping.” (Confinement Dairy Farmer e NY) Rotational Graziing Dairy Farmers Cow Health  “Our [cow] health issues have decreased like you wouldn't believe and…most of that is due to grazing.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer)  “Well the cows are cleaner, healthier…they're more sturdy looking.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer)  “You can see a difference in the cows health through their grazing, just the grass it has a different effect…It's getting the cows into balance where they need to be.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer)

Operational Efficiency, Control & Cow Comfort

Environment & Stewardship

 “[It is] easier to plow…more organic matter…Seeing more living things in the field, seeing snakes…it just seems like everything has a better living condition than before. A lot more wildlife altogether.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer)  “[Grazing is] a go-green situation. You're not using the fossil fuels and running the equipment…” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer)  “I'd say soil life is [the] number one [benefit of pasture], you're not disturbing the soil…Let the earthworms do their job working with the soil - so far I'd say its working pretty good.” (WI e RG Dairy Farmer)

Labor, Lifestyle & Well-being

 “…The stress level is way down on grass. I mean it is just way down.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer)  [Grazing is] easier on me I think. It still takes a lot of work, but its better work.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer)  “Organic [grazing] completely did a paradigm shift in our whole life. From the animals to the way we farm to the way we eat to the way we do things to the way we understand things.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer)

Economic Benefits

 “The input costs are so much lower. She's grazing her own feed, she's spreading her own manure, we don't need all the machinery or the fuel.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer)  “[Grazing] reduces costs in a lot of ways…Feed costs, labor, and hauling manure.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer)  “Our goal [with grazing] was to maintain production and decrease expenses, and…we did achieve that.” (WI e RG Dairy Farmer)

Milk Quality & Public Health

 “We know that by far we are producing the best product … that what [we're] doing is keeping somebody healthy.” (NY e Organic Grazier)  “I'm here to produce healthy food for you…If there's any way I could do it more healthy, I would do it.” (PA - Organic Grazier)

farmers compared their mode of production to rotational grazing operations, often noting their belief that their farm was not wellsuited to grazing systems. “I don't know if there is much for benefits. It's kind of hard the way we do it. It's kind of by financial necessity…there isn't, in my opinion, a good enough pasture. My cows don't milk good enough for the pasture” (NY e Confinement Dairy Farmer) Such confinement farmers identified challenges within their confinement systems and benefits in RG operations, but also identified structural barriers e such as soil type and topography e as preventing their transition to RG systems.

3.2. Motivations for transitioning from confinement to RG dairy systems All of the RG farmers that we talked to had transitioned from confinement to rotational grazing systems of dairy production. Across all of these RG farms, all farmers (100%) self-reported the desire to improve cow health and three-quarters (75%) of RG farmers cited desires for improved economic conditions as primary motivations for making the initial transition from confinement to RG dairy systems. Farmers clearly linked and prioritized motivations for cow health and profitability in describing their decision to transition to RG systems:

“Two reasons [I transitioned to rotational grazing]: One, I started for the cattle, it's better for the cattle. They're grazing, they have less problems, it's good for them… Two, profitability.” (WI e RG Dairy Farmer) When discussing their decision to change to RG, farmers lamented growing problems with their cows' hooves and feet, twisted stomachs, as well as reproductive challenges with their former confinement systems. Farmers attributed these health challenges to problems associated with confinement dairy and saw RG systems as a way to improve their herd health. “…I got sick of taking care of sick [cows]. That's why I looked into grazing: for healthier cows.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer) Farmers understood pasture systems as a cow's natural and necessary habitat and expressed desires to just “get the animals out there” (WI e RG Dairy Farmer) and put “cows in their natural habitat by grazing” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer). Similarly, RG farmers pointed to economic challenges associated with highly capital-intensive confinement systems as motivating their change to RG dairy. For example, RG dairy farmers cited fluctuations in the price of grain, an important source of nutrition for confined dairy cows. “Well right up until right about '95 we were pretty much strictly confinement and we had one year where the price of corn went

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real high. We tried rotational pasture I think it was '95 and we have been on it ever since.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) In addition, many were motivated by desires to separate themselves from the market-driven context of confinement dairy. These farmers also wanted to reduce the inputs and capital required to maintain cropping systems associated with confinement dairy operations. “Profitability was one of the major factors [in deciding to transition to grazing]. You're not running the equipment e you know e tractors and everything else.” (WI e RG Dairy Farmer) Though RG farmers had consistently lower milk production and sales than confinement dairy farmers, they did not have as many costs associated with farm machinery, fuel, feed for cattle, and labor/time spent hauling manure (Table 1). Once farmers adopted RG systems, they noted improvements in their economic situation. Thus, motivations to transition to RG systems could have been externally triggered by a particularly bad year in an agricultural market or more internally by personal dissatisfaction with the market-driven culture of confinement dairy. Though farmers may have been initially motivated to switch to RG systems by economics, organic RG farmers3 in particular spoke passionately about moving beyond these initial motivations to embrace what they describe as the “organic lifestyle”. For these rotational graziers, being an organic producer became an important part of their identity. “The price that you receive for organic products may be what first catches your eye but once you start living the lifestyle, it becomes more part of you…” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) So while the conventional RG dairy farmers we interviewed focused on cow health and economics as motivation for transitioning to RG dairy production, the organic RG farmers had more diverse draws. For example, organic RG farmers emphasized the strong community and culture associated with grazing and organic dairy communities as impetuses for transitioning to rotational grazing. Many organic RG dairy producers were drawn to organic grass-based dairy due to what they saw as an open, supportive community that was not dominated by agri-business and profitdriven interests: We saw a big support system [in organic dairy] that was very positive. It wasn't competitive … it wasn't based on chemical companies trying to sell us something. And people being able to share information. It's just incredible the way you can call people up and ask you know, “What do you use for whatever?” Or “What's working for you?” And you go to meetings and find out, just bring back one thing that could work for us. And I didn't see anything like that in conventional farming.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Similarly, RG organic producers had lifestyle and personal wellbeing motivations for transitioning to organic rotational grazing

3 We studied both organic and conventional RG dairy farmers. “Organic RG dairy farmers” were USDA certified organic dairy producers who complied with requirements limiting the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, regulating the use antibiotics to treat milking cows, and requiring cows to be pastured. Conventional (i.e. non-organic) RG farmers used similar grazing systems to organic RG farmers, without the requirements to meet USDA organic production. Because of pasturing requirements set for organic milk producers, nearly all organic milk producers are RG dairy farmers.

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dairy production. Organic RG farmers discussed how attending pasture walks and organic dairy meetings allowed them to be exposed to farmers working within a different system of production and that they perceived RG farmers to be happier and more fulfilled in their work. “We started going to the pasture walks and listening to people and we said ‘These guys seem happy, there is something different going on here’…I realized on the drive home that it was probably the first time I had been in a room of happy farmers. They were happy with what they were doing, they weren't complaining about this or that.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Through seeing the contentment in others working with rotational grazing and organic dairy, these farmers were motivated to transition to RG systems themselves. Since our study is concerned with factors motivating farmers to transition to RG systems, it is important to note that for organic RG farmers, the decisions to pursue organic milk production and to change to RG systems were intertwined. For many, the choice to produce milk organically was the primary decision, and the management change to RG systems was secondary. For farmers transitioning to organic milk production, rotational grazing is a natural and often necessary management system because organic milk processers and co-ops, and now the federal government, have requirements for the number of days and percent of diet that organic dairy cows must receive from pasture grazing. While several organic RG farmers also made the decision to transition to a RG operation independent of and prior to becoming organic, it is not possible to entirely separate motivations for adopting RG and producing organic milk. Regardless of the order in which decisions are made, organic milk production and RG practices are mutually reinforcing.

3.3. Conceptions of multifunctionality in RG dairy Though neither researchers nor farmers used the word “multifunctionality” during interviews, many RG dairy farmers articulated a well-developed understanding of the important elements within the concept and broad significance of their integration in a farming system. For example, RG dairy farmers captured the notion of agriculture that produces both negative environmental externalities as well as non-commodity public goods. RG farmers specifically noted the environmental costs associated with productivist models of agriculture and the broader public benefits associated with rotational grazing systems: “I think people just don't take into account the environmental costs of the way this nation has farmed. I think [there are] benefits [to rotational grazing that] are sort of intangibles and they may not be directly beneficial to us, but they are to society and our nation as a whole” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Similarly, RG farmers also expressed how they consider noncommodity outcomes when making decisions about management on their farm. These farmers discussed wanting to contribute what they deemed as “intangible” non-production benefits to their farm. “…When we think about doing different things, it's not just about what those things are, but it's about how they affect the soul of the farm. What else does it bring to the farm without being just another product?” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Thus, RG farmers supported the general model of multifunctional agriculture as important for the production of food and fiber as well as for broader, non-commodity public goods.

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Beyond validating the relevance of the MFA concept to their farms, RG farmers consistently identified a set of substantive RGbased benefits as emerging from their agricultural practice (additional supporting quotations for all themes are represented in Table 2). RG dairy farmers discussed that they achieved the cow health and economic benefits that drew them to management intensive grazing systems in the first place. “Our [cow] health issues have decreased like you wouldn't believe and…most of that is due to grazing.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer) Additionally, RG farmers emphasized that transitioning to RG dairy from confinement production benefitted their labor, lifestyle, and general well-being. In particular, they commented upon reduced stress levels, more fulfilling work, and healthier lifestyle choices. “[Grazing is] easier on me I think. It still takes a lot of work, but its better work.” (PA eRG Dairy Farmer) RG farmers also perceived that their milk quality improved with RG-based dairy, and cited the broader public health benefit of making that milk available for consumption. “We know that by far we are producing the best product that we've ever produced here. Not only for everybody's health, but when you take the whole aspect of “you are providing food for people” and knowing that what you're doing is keeping somebody healthy.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Finally, RG farmers identified environmental and land stewardship benefits emerging from RG systems, including reduction in fossil fuel usage and enhanced wildlife habitat. However, RG farmers primarily focused their discussion of environmental benefits on the soil and water quality services that RG systems improve. The primary conservation discourse that emerged was on soil health and conservation as it related to pasture productivity. RG farmers discussed improving soil quality as an important farm management goal: “My goal is to improve my soil to the point where I have less disease and less insects… [to] increase the biology of the soil and the life in the soil generally.” (PA eRG Dairy Farmer) Farmers also linked the RG practice with improvements in soil conservation on their property, noting in particular that their permanent pastures lead to improved soil retention and reduced erosion: “One thing that is very interesting is driving around here on a rainy day. You drive past the neighbors and you will see brown water running out of the fields, it runs clear as can be all [on our farm] except where we till and we don't do that very often.” (PA eRG Dairy Farmer) RG dairy farmers also emphasized their efforts to contribute to water quality and stream bank structure, most commonly through stream bank fencing that kept cattle out of streams or funneled them to a designated stream crossing. “Yeah [stream bank fencing] I think is very important, what that does for us is keep the cattle out…if they are out on the pasture they will go down in the creek and just stand there. They just ruin it.” (PA e RG Dairy Farmer) Thus, RG farmers were aware of the impact of their farm management and pasture practices on water quality, and made specific decisions to mitigate the impact of cow traffic on streams.

RG farmers also held specific conceptions of how benefits emerging from their practice were linked and inter-related. Organic RG farmers, in particular, expressed a complex and interdependent concept of multifunctionality that was less “product” driven than conventional RG farmers. Conventional RG farmers reliably returned to improvements they saw in cow health and in economic outcomes e the primary motivations for adopting RG systems e when discussing the benefits of grass-based dairy production. However, organic RG farmers consistently offered a system-level understanding of the values their farm management promoted that was centered on the concept of “health”. In particular, organic RG farmers reliably described the same interdependent chain of benefits emerging from RG dairy production, starting with improved soil health, which contributes to improved pasture health, which results in improved cow health, which supports improved milk quality, which provides a product for improved human health. As organic RG farmers said: Healthier land, healthier crops, and healthier animals and food…and seeing healthy customers. (PA e RG Dairy Farmer) “The quick and dirty…is if you have healthy land you have a healthy plant, if you have a health plant you have a healthy animal and if then you have a healthy byproduct.” (NY eRG Dairy Farmer) These organic RG farmers used “health” as a metaphor to describe the multiple benefits they saw emerging from within their RG-based agricultural systems. As farmers conceived it, the production of one of the benefits is dependent upon the production of another. In discussing benefits, RG farmers consistently linked their agricultural practice with improved services at broader social and ecological scales. For example, RG farmers perceived one of the benefits of their grass-based dairy as positively influencing human health, which they spoke of as an “American” public health issue with impacts on a national scale. RG farmers also envisioned the positive influence of their actions on landscape and regional scales. One RG farmer, for instance, situated his farm management practices within the broader watershed: “The water from that creek ends up in the Chesapeake Bay. We are part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed so if we pollute the water here on our farm, that affects hundreds of thousands of people along the way. So it was an eye opener to see that one person can make a difference, positive or negative. Whatever we can do, if that was our part, that's what we should do.” (NY e RG Dairy Farmer) Similarly, another RG farmer saw his farm as an opportunity to create employment for people in the community or region: “We have a responsibility e with neighbors, with other people e to find jobs for people.” (NY eRG Dairy Farmer) For these RG dairy farmers, multifunctionality was rooted in the tangible practice of the management of their farm, but linked to the promotion of broader public values. 4. Discussion Much of the current research on multifunctional agriculture has been conducted in a European context in regards to broad policy and economic issues. We sought to expand upon this work and examine the relevance of multifunctionality in agricultural practice and policy by exploring the lived expressions of multifunctionality

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at the farm-level in the United States. In particular, we examined farmer motivations for transitioning to rotational grazing (RG) dairy systems as well as farmers' conception of non-production benefits emerging from their agricultural practice. Through our work, we found that multifunctionality does matter to farmers in the United States. In particular, RG dairy farmers in our study were motivated to transition to rotational grazing systems to achieve stronger multifunctionality through their farm practice. These RG farmers understood their agricultural practice as producing a suite of public as well as private production and non-production benefits. Our findings support a multi-scale, interdependent model of multifunctionality that recognizes the potential for agriculture's broad benefits to the public, as well as the multiple private benefits to the farmers who practice it. 4.1. Motivated by multifunctionality We sought to understand the production of multifunctional benefits through an examination of on-farm practice and farmer motivations for transitioning to multifunctional agricultural systems. As in other studies (e.g. Didier and Brunson, 2004; Lockie and Halpin, 2005; Smit et al., 2009), we found farmers emphasized multiple motivations for transitioning to MFA, investigated here as rotational grazing (RG) dairy farming. Farmers were motivated by the promise of multifunctionality afforded through rotational grazing, consistently noting desires to boost cow health, improve profitability, and enhance their own well-being and lifestyle. Consistent with Sutherland et al.'s (2012) model of agricultural transition and “trigger events”, we found that farmers' decision to adopt RG dairy systems were often linked to changes in agricultural markets, encounters with farmers in RG and organic networks, or herd health problems. Thus, our work supports a complex, contextspecific and dynamic model of decision-making about farm management. Our findings add to the growing body of literature that challenges the notion of the farmer as motivated only by economics that has been the traditional model in agricultural studies. Though all RG dairy farmers emphasized a complex set of motivations for transitioning to MFA, organic RG dairy farmers specifically cited the draw of the organic and grass-based agriculture community, as well as the lifestyle changes associated with grazing and organic production. Though organic RG dairy farmers may have been initially motivated by the higher price of organic milk, they credited personal learning that occurred through becoming involved in the organic farming community for deepening their dedication to organic RG operations. The pattern of initially transitioning to organics for economic or pragmatic reasons and subsequently developing identity and values that support organic practice has been previously identified agricultural systems (e.g. Darnhofer et al., 2005; Stobbelaar et al., 2009). In this way, the organic agricultural community e including informal networks of farmers and formal producer groups e serves as a source of education, common identity, and shared culture that supports the transition to and maintenance of multifunctional forms of agriculture. Thus, our work supports others (Bills and Gross, 2005; Jordan and Warner, 2010; Lamine, 2011; Nelson et al., 2013) which suggest partnerships across farmers and organizations that support MFA are important to promoting multifunctionality on the landscape. The demonstrated support of strong organic farming communities of practice for grazing and MFA, coupled with the new USDA grazing requirements for organic dairy indicates that organic dairy may be an important means through which RG systems grow in the United States. While motivations for transitioning to RG dairy from confinement dairy were multifaceted, farmers did not emphasize environmental reasons. The absence of environmental motivation for

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switching to RG is significant because MFA and rotational grazing are often championed by those interested in the environmental conservation benefits of MFA systems. However, RG dairy farmers did indicate that after transitioning to RG systems, their farm management was informed by environmental goals. Despite previous studies demonstrating environmental flexibility afforded by grass-based agriculture (Martin et al., 2009) or emphasizing biodiversity benefits of grazing (Swagemakers et al., 2009), we found that RG farmers' conservation practices were focused strongly on concerns for soil quality and erosion and to a lesser extent, stream quality. RG systems bring farmers closer to these conservation issues because the quality of the pasture system depends directly upon high soil and water quality. In most cases, RG farmers are working on creating a perennial or permanent pasture stand that requires high quality soil and complex soil structure; thus it is in RG farmers' best interest to focus on soil management. This focus likely was also influenced by RG farmers interaction with their local Soil & Water Conservation District staff as well as the Natural Resource Conservation Service (see Nelson et al., 2013), both of which have policy directives to promote soil and water conservation and support RG farmers through education and cost-sharing. 4.2. A system-oriented conception of multifunctionality In addition to examining farmers' motivations for transitioning to RG dairy systems, we explored how dairy farmers in the eastern US understood the benefits emerging from their agricultural practice through the analytical lens of multifunctionality. We found that RG dairy farmers identified a broader suite of both public and private benefits emerging from their agricultural practice than confinement dairy farmers, who focused primarily on production and farm efficiency benefits of confinement systems. These RG farmers emphasized the importance of this multifunctionality and discussed reinforcing these additional public and private benefits through their continued farm management. Thus, we find that the multifunctionality concept is relevant to how farmers in the US envision their farm management, as suggested in a more limited context by Hollander (2004). This salience is important since MFA has been predominantly relegated to discussions in the academic and European policy realms. However, RG dairy farmers' understanding of the benefits emerging from their agricultural practice expands upon typical notions of multifunctional agriculture as expressed in the literature. US academics and policy-makers can enrich their understanding of multifunctionality based on farmers' lived-experience of multifunctionality. For example, RG dairy producers articulated a systemoriented expression of multifunctionality which expands the idea of multifunctionality beyond a basic understanding of agriculture that produces multiple, discrete benefits. In particular, RG dairy farmers consistently identified a set of interdependent benefits that emerged from their grass-based dairy production. In a theoretically-based critique, Wilson (2007) similarly noted “the frequent neglect of a holistic vision of the interconnectedness between these components” (pp. 186) in the multifunctional agriculture literature. Thus, understanding multifunctionality as categorized by independently produced “outcomes” or “functions” does not capture how farmers interpret multifunctional agriculture. RG farmers understood benefits as inter-related and interdependent. Thus, our findings suggest that we should not only think of production and non-production values as “jointly produced”, but also of non-production benefits as interdependent and inseparable amongst themselves and across scales. For example, in the system logic of RG farmers we interviewed, improved human health could not be achieved without improving soil quality and conservation, enhancing pasture quality, or improving the health of their cows. While Barnes (2006) found

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that Scottish farms with high multifunctionality also have improved technical efficiency, in our study we acknowledge that benefits are largely perceived and relationships between these benefits are constructed from the experience of individual RG dairy farmers. Future studies may seek to empirically measure the realization of and relationship among diverse benefits in multifunctional agricultural systems. Additionally, we find that the issue of animal health is worthy of particular attention in discussions related to MFA as it emerged as a critical motivator for transitioning to RG practices as well as a central element of farm-level multifunctionality. Though livestock are often overlooked in conservation and environmental research on agriculture, our findings suggest that animal health is central to promoting environmental outcomes and multifunctionality more broadly. In the RG dairy system that farmers described, cows are the key actor in coupling the ‘natural’ system of the soil, water, and vegetation to the social system of the farmer, the farm family, and the broader milk consuming public. In this interdependent system, promoting cow health through pasturing is conceived of as central to enhanced environmental outcomes. In the context of coupled human and natural systems (e.g. Liu et al., 2007), our work suggests that the closer the components of production to natural environment, the more responsive that system may be to feedback, which may ultimately foster stronger multifunctionality. This calls for greater attention to animal health and well-being by those interested in sustainable agriculture and multifunctional agriculture. Finally, based on RG farmers' identification of benefits as well as previous work by Belletti et al. (2002), we suggest the concept of MFA can be expanded to include private individual benefits in addition to broad public benefits. Scholars previously have discussed how definitions of multifunctionality vary by the single scale at which analysts conceive them (Renting et al., 2009; Wilson, 2007). RG farmers, however, discussed multifunctionality as occurring on multiple scales in relation to their farm practice, from the individual farm-level to the national level. Though multifunctionality is often characterized in terms of broader public goods, our findings demonstrate that RG farmers attained private and individual benefits such as more enjoyable work, individual economic benefits, and improved cow health. While the public goods emerging from multifunctional agriculture may be most widely relevant for discussions concerning farm policy and trade, investigations of multifunctional agriculture need to expand the lens of inquiry from solely public goods to the diverse private goods associated with different land-use and agricultural systems. Though this micro-scale multifunctionality is outside of the realm of the initial conception as a public and trade policy concept, we and others (e.g. Aschmann and Cropper, 2007) have noted RG dairy farmers and farm families experience enhanced personal benefit as compared to confinement dairy production. Expanding our view of multifunctionality from broad “collective benefits” (Daugstad et al., 2006, pp. 68) or “societal objectives” (OECD, 2001, pp. 11) to include the farm-level may capture the non-production benefits that farmers themselves garner from their agricultural practice, ultimately achieving a theoretical construct that addresses the inter-related and interdependent nature of multifunctionality across scales. 5. Conclusions The concept of multifunctional agriculture is gaining traction in US academic circles as a way to understand and foster noncommodity and commodity benefits provided by certain agricultural systems. However, few studies in the US have grounded multifunctionality in farm-level investigations of farmers' motivations for transitioning to MFA or in their narratives about the nature of the non-productive benefits emerging from their agricultural practice.

Multifunctionality mattered to farmers in our study; the desire to achieve multiple benefits e such as improved cow health, increased profitability, and enhanced personal well-being e motivated farmers' transition to RG and guided on-farm management decisions. Additionally, multifunctionality was salient to how dairy farmers understood and sought to enhance the benefits emerging from their agricultural practice. However, MFA understood simply as agriculture that produces commodity as well as non-commodity public goods, as is often expressed in the multifunctionality literature, does not capture important elements of these RG dairy farmers' concept of multifunctionality. Farmers identified a system of “multiple functions” interdependently produced and also associated these functions with their agricultural practice at multiple scales e from individual and farm-level to regional and national level. We contend that understanding agricultural benefits as experienced by the farmer is an important contribution to enriching the multifunctionality concept in the US context, informing agrienvironmental policy and programs, and ultimately expanding multifunctional agricultural practice in the US. For example, based upon our research, there is room for greater consideration of private or independent benefits in narratives of MFA in US agricultural policies and programs, particularly in forums with direct relevance to producers, such as extension education materials. Pairing individual non-production and production benefits in the US MFA discussion may increase the relevance and utility of the concept for farmers, expand the adoption of MFA systems by US farmers, and ultimately enhance the production of broader public goods currently at the center of the MFA narrative. Additionally, emphasizing interdependent multifunctionality in discussions of MFA may make the concept more meaningful to farmers less interested in viewing the multifunctionality of their farm as simply a collection of public goods or “outputs”, than viewing their farming practices as contributing to a multifunctional farm system at multiple levels. These findings contribute to the development of a model of multifunctionality that is salient to US agricultural policy and practice and that seeks to enhance agriculture's benefits to farmers as well as to the broader public. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank faculty members Nick Jordan, Steve Manson, and Bruce Vondracek for their broad contribution as research team colleagues. We also are grateful to Sondra Campbell for assisting with interviews, as well as Katie Clower, Sarah Graves, and Andrew Nessel for on-farm methodological assistance. A special thanks to all the farmers we interviewed for sharing their farm and their perspectives. We also thank Maria Dahmus Kim, Adam Kokotovich, and Teresa Woods for their comments on earlier drafts of this article and Alison Slaats for map-making and GIS work. Additionally, we appreciate the comments of anonymous reviewers, which significantly strengthened this paper. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Coupled HumanNatural System/Biocomplexity grant (BCS-BE: CNH-0709613). Appendix 1. A selection of interview questions from which findings regarding motivations and conceptions of multifunctionality were drawn. Interviews were semistructured, so whole interviews were analyzed for themes related to motivations for and conceptions of multifunctionality Have you always done this kind of farming?  If yes, why has this continued to work for you?  If no, how do you do things differently?

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What are the benefits of this type of dairy for you?  What makes this possible? Why? What are the challenges for this type of dairy?  What causes this? Why? Have you made a change in your dairy system? If so, what?  When and why did you decide to make the transition?  What kind of improvements did you notice as you made the transition?  What kind of problems did you notice as you made the transition?  What do you plan for the future? Why? What motivates you when you are working on the farm?  What do you value about your life and this choice?

Appendix 2. Table of codes authors used to qualitatively analyze interview text. Authors inductively derived coding categories through an emergent and iterative process described in detail in the Methods section

Research Focus/Theme

Coding Sub-categories

Motivations for Transitioning to Rotational Grazing Systems

Cow Health Motivations Economic Motivations Environmental Motivations Lifestyle Motivations

Benefits Linked to Farm Management Style & Elements of Multifunctionality

Self-Reported Lack of Current Benefits Operational Efficiency, Control, and Cow Comfort Cow Health Environment and Stewardship Economic Benefits Milk Quality and Public Health

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