The success of large-scale public expenditures and efforts to reduce nutrient pollution in the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin will depend on voluntary farmer cooperation. Understanding farmers’ attitudes and preferences for nutrient reduction will support nutrient abatement from agriculture. This paper therefore provides estimates of farmers' willingness to pay (WTP) for the water quality benefits which arise from nutrient abatement, and explores how farmers’ preferences for such benefits differ from the public. Evidence from two discrete choice experiments indicates that Iowa farmers are willing to pay more than the Iowa public for reducing downstream hypoxia, but have a lower WTP for local water quality improvements. The local benefits examined are better lake clarity, rarer beach closures from algal blooms, fewer algal toxin warnings, and reduced nitrate concentration. Farmers’ sensitivity to education is also assessed using a split-sample information experiment. Omitting information about downstream hypoxia from the survey does not significantly impact farmers preferences. The insignificance of information impacts and the significant differences in water quality preferences between farmers and the public are robust to a range of Conditional Logit and Mixed Logit specifications. In addition, farmers who identify agriculture as the primary nutrient polluter of Iowa lakes are significantly more supportive of a fertilizer tax and are willing to pay more to improve local water quality.