Associate Professor Alejandro Plastina has been selected to receive the Choices Magazine Outstanding Article Award for "The Invisible Elephant: Disadoption of Conservation Practices in the United States." Plastina authored the article with Wendiam Sawadgo, an assistant professor and extension economist at Auburn University. At the time the article was written, Sawadgo was a PhD student in Iowa State University's Department of Economics.

The article examines trends in cover crop usage in the United States revealed through U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Plastina and Sawadgo found that cover crop adoption increased by 50% between 2012 and 2017, while showing substantial variability across the United States. The use of conservation tillage, including no-till, followed varying patterns through time and across main cash crops—an initial period of substantial growth in conservation tillage and no-till wheat (2004–2009) and soybeans (2002–2006) was followed by less rapid gains for wheat (2009–2017) and decline in conservation tillage and no-till soybeans (2006–2012), while growth in conservation tillage and no-till use was modest in corn and cotton.

Plastina and Sawadgo will be recognized during the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Awards & Fellows Recognition Ceremony on Monday, July 24 at the 2023 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.