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ARS Home » Plains Area » Las Cruces, New Mexico » Range Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #357417
Title: Seeing is not always believing: crop loss and climate change perceptions among farm advisors

Author
item NILES, MEREDITH - University Of Vermont
item WIENER, SARAH - Us Forest Service (FS)
item SCHATTMAN, RACHEL - Us Forest Service (FS)
item ROESCH-MCNALLY, GABRIELLE - Us Forest Service (FS)
item Reyes, Julian Jon

Submitted to: Environmental Research Letters
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/3/2019
Publication Date: 3/26/2019
Citation: Niles, M., Wiener, S., Schattman, R., Roesch-McNally, G., Reyes, J.T. 2019. Seeing is not always believing: crop loss and climate change perceptions among farm advisors. Environmental Research Letters. 14(4):044003. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aafbb6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aafbb6

Interpretive Summary: This paper examines climate change belief and risk perceptions among farmers and agricultural farm advisors. Surveys were performed on United States Deparrtment of Agriculture farm service employees. These data were linked with crop loss data. We found that farm advisors work direclty with farmers on disaster and crop loss issues. Our results found a positive relationship between crop loss and perceived weather variability. While crop loss does not lead to belief in climate change, weather variability is more salient among agricultural advisors which suggests further work in terminology used in climate change communication and outreach.

Technical Abstract: As climate change is expected to significantly affect agricultural systems globally, agricultural farm advisors have been increasingly recognized as an important resource in helping farmers address these challenges. While there have been many studies exploring the climate change belief and risk perceptions as well as behaviors of both farmers and agricultural farm advisors, there are very few studies that have explored how these perceptions relate to actual climate impacts in agriculture. Here we couple survey data from United States Department of Agriculture farm service employees (n=6,514) with historical crop loss data across the United States to explore the relationship of actual climate-related crop losses on farm to farm advisor perceptions of climate change and potential behaviors. Using structural equation modelling we find that among farm advisors that work directly with farms on disaster and crop loss issues, there is a significant positive relationship between crop loss and perceived weather variability changes, while across all farm advisors crop loss is associated with reduced likelihood to believe in anthropogenic climate change. Further, we find that weather variability perceptions are the most consistently and highly correlated with farm advisors’ perceptions about the need for farm adaptation and future services. These results suggest that seeing crop loss does not lead to climate change belief, but may drive weather variability perceptions, which in turn affect farm adaptation perceptions. This lends further evidence to the debate over terminology in climate change communication and outreach, suggesting that weather variability may be the most salient among agricultural advisors.