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Farmers and Climate Change: A Cross-National Comparison of Beliefs and Risk Perceptions in High-Income Countries

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Abstract

Climate change has serious implications for the agricultural industry—both in terms of the need to adapt to a changing climate and to modify practices to mitigate for the impacts of climate change. In high-income countries where farming tends to be very intensive and large scale, it is important to understand farmers’ beliefs and concerns about climate change in order to develop appropriate policies and communication strategies. Looking across six study sites—Scotland, Midwestern United States, California, Australia, and two locations in New Zealand—this paper finds that over half of farmers in each location believe that climate change is occurring. However, there is a wide range of beliefs regarding the anthropogenic nature of climate change; only in Australia do a majority of farmers believe that climate change is anthropogenic. In all locations, a majority of farmers believe that climate change is not a threat to local agriculture. The different policy contexts and existing impacts from climate change are discussed as possible reasons for the variation in beliefs. This study compared varying surveys from the different locations and concludes that survey research on farmers and climate change in diverse locations should strive to include common questions to facilitate comparisons.

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Acknowledgments

The survey of Midwestern corn producers was developed through a collaboration of two United States Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA)-supported Projects, Cropping Systems Coordinated Agricultural Project (CAP): Climate Change, Mitigation, and Adaptation in Corn-based Cropping Systems (Award No. 2011-68002-30190) and Useful to Usable (U2U): Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers (Award No. 2011-68002-30220). Additional funding was provided by the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Purdue University College of Agriculture, and the Iowa Natural Resources Conservation Service. The California Energy Commission (Grant # CEC-500-2012-032) provided funding for the California study, and we would like to thank Mark Lubell and Louise Jackson for their insights on this survey. This survey and research on Scottish dairy farming was supported by the European Commission Animal Change project (contract no. KBBE-266018) and the Scottish Government Research Programmes into Food and Economic Adaptation. We would like to thank Luiza Toma for her assistance on the Scottish questionnaire. Funding for the New Zealand survey and research was provided by AgResearch, Ltd., the United States National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program and the United States National Science Foundation Responding to Rapid Environmental Change IGERT program Grant NSF- DGE#0801430. We thank Robyn Dynes and Margaret Brown for their insights on the New Zealand survey. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, Canberra, Australia supported the Australian survey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Purdue University, 195 Marsteller Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA

    Linda S. Prokopy

  2. Iowa State University, 303c East Hall, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    J. G. Arbuckle

  3. Scotland’s Rural College, SRUC Edinburgh Campus, King’s Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JG, Scotland, UK

    Andrew P. Barnes

  4. The Ohio State University, 1328 Dover Rd., Wooster, OH, 44691, USA

    V. R. Haden

  5. The Innovation Centre, University of Canberra, Building 23, Level B, Canberra, Australia

    Anthony Hogan

  6. Harvard University, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Meredith T. Niles

  7. Iowa State University, 238 Science II, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    John Tyndall

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  1. Linda S. Prokopy
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Correspondence to Linda S. Prokopy.

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Prokopy, L.S., Arbuckle, J.G., Barnes, A.P. et al. Farmers and Climate Change: A Cross-National Comparison of Beliefs and Risk Perceptions in High-Income Countries. Environmental Management 56, 492–504 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-015-0504-2

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