No 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 future farmer needs. 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 farmer needs. These results suggest that seeing crop loss may 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.

Agricultural service providers often work closely with producers, and are well positioned to include weather and climate change information in the services they provide. By doing so, they can help producers reduce risks due to climate variability and change. A national survey of United States Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency (FSA) field staff (n = 4621) was conducted in 2016. The survey was designed to assess FSA employees’ use of climate and weather-related data and explore their perspectives on climate change, attitudes toward adaptation and concerns regarding climate- and weather-driven risks. Two structural equation models were developed to explore relationships between these factors, and to predict respondents’ willingness to integrate climate and weather data into their professional services in the future. The two models were compared with assess the relative influence of respondents’ current use of weather and climate information. Findings suggest that respondents’ perceptions of weather-related risk in combination with their personal observations of weather variability help predict whether an individual intends to use weather and climate information in the future. Importantly, climate change belief is not a significant predictor of this intention; however, the belief that producers will have to adapt to climate change in order to remain viable is. Surprisingly, whether or not an individual currently uses weather and climate information is not a good predictor of whether they intend to in the future. This suggests that there are opportunities to increase employee exposure and proficiency with weather and climate information to meet the needs of American farmers by helping them to reduce risk.