Seeing is not always believing: crop loss and climate change perceptions among farm advisors

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.

Assessing agricultural risk management using historic crop insurance loss data over the ogallala aquifer

“…8). This could support the idea that certain areas are insuring more due to perceived risk (Niles et al, 2019) even if losses remain static over time. Moreover, counties in Nebraska report a larger proportion of their indemnities due to hail as compared with other Ogallala counties (Fig.…”

“…8), agricultural advisors and farmers still rely heavily on recent experiences and loss (Marx et al, 2007;Coles and Scott, 2009). Moreover, perceived adaptation and/or farmer needs are positively correlated with weather variability, indicating the usefulness of assessing past crop losses (Niles et al, 2019). Near-term memory of losses due to drought and hail are important to producers in their medium to long-term adaptation and uptake of crop insurance, in addition to other operational and tactical management strategies (Taylor et al, 1988;Prokopy et al, 2013;Brown et al, 2017).…”

Spatio-temporal variation of crop loss in the United States from 2001 to 2016

“…Even among agricultural advisors or extension professionals who work closely with farmers, perceived weather variability is positively correlated with crop loss, while perceptions for adaptation and future farmers' needs are consistently correlated with weather variability perceptions (Niles et al 2019). Therefore, more recent and significant crop losses and their associated COL may be most salient to farmers in influencing management changes (Niles et al 2019). Using this knowledge, producers may elect to reduce their risk by shifting production systems, increasing crop insurance coverage, changing varieties of crops (e.g.…”

Opportunities and Challenges for Hurricane Resilience on Agricultural and Forest Land in the U.S. Southeast and Caribbean

“…While evidence indicates that hurricanes are becoming more intense due to climate change, land managers may still be reluctant to implement practices that promote resilience to these events. Diverse factors can influence land managers and advisors to adopt or promote practices that are considered more resilient to climate change and extreme weather events [13], but higher perceived risk of climate and weather impacts has been repeatedly found to increase positive attitudes towards adaptation [14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…Additionally, the more removed, or "psychologically distant" an individual is from an event in terms of time, space, social distance, and certainty, the less influence that event and related risk perception has on decision making [19], and decisions regarding climate change adaptation tend to be driven by concerns surrounding local impacts [13,20]. For example, Haden and coauthors [15] found that farmers in California were more likely to be willing to adopt adaptation practices based on specific local climate conditions, such as water availability and summer temperatures, and Niles and coauthors [18] found that perceived weather variability had a significant influence on agricultural advisors' perception of the need for farmers to adapt.…”