A typology of dairy farmer perceptions towards climate change

Abstract

Dairy farming is an industry which could potentially mitigate a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. However, perception and acceptance towards climate change is a significant barrier to voluntary adoption of best practice techniques. A number of countries have set targets for reducing emissions, of which Scotland has one of the most ambitious agendas. This paper presents results from an extensive survey of 540 dairy farmers, conducted in 2009, with the aim of understanding attitudes, values and intentions towards climate change. Only half of these farmers agreed that temperatures would rise in the future and this could significantly hinder adoption of voluntary measures to meet emissions targets. To explore this further a typology was developed on the responses to attitude and value statements, using principal components and cluster analysis methods. Six distinct types were found to exist which had a range of outlooks towards the impact of climate change in the future. However, five of the six types stated no intention to adopt practices which would reduce emissions. The typology approach supports diversified engagement strategies and a more innovation-led or resource maximisation view towards farming was expressed by several of these types. This may indicate that policy makers should focus on 'win-win' technologies as a means to effectively engage with these. However, a number of types were disengaged from the process which was driven by uncertainties towards projections for global warming and this needs to be addressed by both scientists and policy makers to ensure greater participation within the farming community.

Farmer’s intended and actual adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies

“…For non-adopters, farmers who believed in human-induced climate change and expressed concerns about its impacts were more likely to indicate they would adopt adaptation and mitigation behaviors. This is consistent with existing studies where farmers with climate belief and risk perceptions were more likely to adopt mitigation and adaptation behaviors (Arbuckle et al 2013;Haden et al 2012;Barnes and Toma 2012) and support climate change policies (Niles et al 2013). Our measure for human-induced climate change (44 % belief) also appears to be within the range of other surveys measuring developed world farmer climate perspectives ranging from 25 % in Scotland to 33 % in California to 59 % in the Midwest US to 63 % in Canada (Prokopy et al 2015;Cox et al 2015).…”

“…Efforts to understand how farmers perceive climate change and may respond have been particularly focused in developing countries (Wood et al 2014;Kristjanson et al Bryan et al 2009;Seo and Mendelsohn 2008) especially in the context of food security and production. However, there is growing attention on assessing developed country farmers' perspectives on climate change and their responses (Prokopy et al 2015;Niles et al 2015;Arbuckle et al 2014;Niles et al 2013;Haden et al 2012;Barnes and Toma 2012). This work is crucial to assess both at a case study level Arbuckle et al 2014;Haden et al 2012) and across broader contexts (Wood et al 2014) to determine drivers of climate mitigation and adaptation behaviors.…”

Tackling wicked environmental problems: The discourse and its influence on praxis in Scotland

“…Woodland planting has been 518 considered an essential strategy to mitigate GHG emissions due to its capacity to sequester 519 CO2 from the atmosphere. However, in Scotland, this strategy is difficult to implement due 520 to conflicting food and climate change policy goals (Feliciano et al, 2013, Munoz-Rojas 521 Morenes et al, 2015), low acceptability of woodland planting schemes among Scottish 522 farmers (Crabtree et al, 2001;WEAG, 2012) and volatile stakeholder perceptions about the 523 consequences of climate change (Barnes & Toma, 2012;Feliciano et al, 2014). Therefore, 524 the strategy to mitigate the climate change problem is itself a wicked problem and because 525 of that it engenders slow progress in addressing the main problem.…”

Can’t get there from here: attainable distance, sustainable intensification and full-scale technical potential

“…Hence, the most significant tier of sustainable intensification, which has not been discussed in detail, is the 'scaling out' of technologies across a region and along a supply chain. This exposes a sustainable technology to behavioural differences across farming and between supply chain actors, including consumers (Haden et al 2012;Barnes and Toma 2012;Islam et al 2013;Fischer et al 2013), economic barriers (Anderson et al 2001;Antle and Diagana 2003;Prokopy et al 2008;Baumgart-Getz et al 2012) and biophysical barriers (Chavas and Holt 1990;Brain et al 2014). These barriers are also determined by the type and amount of intervention within the sector, which in turn is characterised by the governance structure of a particular region.…”