From Purdue University: WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.
Associate professor of natural resource social science Linda Prokopy and fellow researchers surveyed 6,795 people in the agricultural sector in 2011-2012 to determine their beliefs about climate change and whether variation in the climate is triggered by human activities, natural causes or an equal combination of both.
More than 90 percent of the scientists and climatologists surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with more than 50 percent attributing climate change primarily to human activities.
In contrast, 66 percent of corn producers surveyed said they believed climate change was occurring, with 8 percent pinpointing human activities as the main cause. A quarter of producers said they believed climate change was caused mostly by natural shifts in the environment, and 31 percent said there was not enough evidence to determine whether climate change was happening or not.
The survey results highlight the division between scientists and farmers over climate change and the challenges in communicating climate data and trends in non-polarizing ways, Prokopy said.
“Whenever climate change gets introduced, the conversation tends to turn political,” she said. “Scientists and climatologists are saying climate change is happening, and agricultural commodity groups and farmers are saying they don’t believe that. Our research suggests that this disparity in beliefs may cause agricultural stakeholders to respond to climate information very differently.”
Climate change presents both potential gains and threats to U.S. agriculture. Warmer temperatures could extend the growing season in northern latitudes, and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide could improve the water use efficiency of some crops. But increases in weather variability and extreme weather events could lower crop yields.
Growers can manage the potential risks linked to extreme rain events and soil degradation by using adaptive strategies such as planting cover crops, using no-till techniques, increasing the biodiversity of grasses and forage and extending crop rotations, Prokopy said. These strategies contribute to soil health and water quality and also help capture carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by agricultural systems.
Currently, agriculture accounts for 10-12 percent of the total human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally.
Focusing on the causes of climate change, however, is likely to polarize the agricultural community and lead to inaction, said study co-author Lois Wright Morton, professor of sociology at Iowa State University. To foster productive dialogue, she said, scientists and climatologists need to “start from the farmer’s perspective.”
“Farmers are problem solvers,” she said. “A majority of farmers view excess water on their land and variable weather as problems and are willing to adapt their practices to protect their farm operation. Initiating conversations about adaptive management is more effective than talking about the causes of climate change.”
The gap in views on climate change is caused in part by how individuals combine scientific facts with their own personal values, Morton said.
“Differences in beliefs are related to a variety of factors, such as personal experiences, cultural and social influences, and perceptions of risk and vulnerability,” she said.
Prokopy advises scientists to “recognize that their worldviews may be different than those of farmers. Moderating communication of climate information based on that realization is key.”
Climate science could also be better communicated by using intermediaries such as Extension educators and agricultural advisers to translate data in ways that are most relevant to growers, she said.
“Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
A table of the complete survey results is available at https://news.uns.purdue.edu/images/2014/prokopy-climatetable.pdf
The study was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and is available at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00172.1.
The surveys were conducted as part of two large-scale projects, Useful to Usable and the Corn-based Cropping Systems Coordinated Agricultural Project, which aim to help farmers in the Midwest adapt to climate change. The projects were funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Purdue University, Iowa State University and the Iowa Natural Resource Conservation Service also provided funding for the research.
Writer: Natalie van Hoose, 765-496-2050, nvanhoos@purdue.edu
Sources: Linda Prokopy, 765-496-2221, lprokopy@purdue.edu
Lois Wright Morton, 515-294-2843, lwmorton@iastate.edu
Related website:
Purdue University Department of Forestry and Natural Resources: https://ag.purdue.edu/fnr/Pages/default.aspx
ABSTRACT
Agricultural stakeholder views on climate change: Implications for conducting research and outreach
Linda Stalker Prokopy 1; Lois Wright Morton 2; J. Gordon Arbuckle Jr. 2; Amber Saylor Mase 1; Adam Wilke 2
1 Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
2 Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA
Scientists and farmers who operate in the scientific domain acknowledge climate change during indefinite, but noticeably shorter than “official” time frames. And are skeptical about definitive statements that claim knowledge of quality and quantity of human influence on the global environment.
The oracles have been wrong before, repeatedly, periodically. The scientific method was supposed to limited their departures to universal and extra-universal domains. Unfortunately, the incentives to resort to inductive reasoning and offer forecasts, and even predictions, based on estimates of estimates of estimates, for purposes other than to support rational risk management, are simply too lucrative to ignore.
It is possible to be intelligent, well educated and still be naïve.
Farmers are not naïve because we have been humbled by our
experience. Intelligent well educated depends on the individual.
We farmers struggle daily to originate wealth from the earth.
We may or may not generate a margin in the processes.
If the scientific community wants to help how about a highly
accurate 15 day forecast, then a 30 and 60 day. Such a thing
would have major implications for commodity markets.
It usually gets back to competition and money doesn’t it?
Another study on how to make the AGW message and propaganda more palatable to a group that ain’t drinking the KoolAid.
Here is today’s op ed from Inhofe on the EPA water rules.
http://newsok.com/sen.-jim-inhofe-epa-should-withdraw-proposed-water-rule/article/5365826
The idiot politico’s have messed with electric power generation, and now it looks like they want to mess with the growing of food (that is my take away from the article – they are sizing up the human obstacles). Hubris of the ivory tower collegiate utopians.
Insightful comments by EM Smith. I’ve worked outside in the wilds of northern Canada for 25 years in both forestry and oil and gas and have observed that people who live and work outside have learned a thing or two about how nature really is, not how they imagine it to be. The number of scientists and environmentalists I listen to that appear to be cluless about the natural world truly surprises me. I would have thought that an environmentalist would at least educate themselves about this thing they supposedly love and fight for. And the scientist that models and studies nature’s minutiae without understanding its most fundamental attributes is equally bothersome.
If this study tells me anything it’s that the outside people have over time been humbled by nature while the inside people are burdened by their own sense of importance. Just my crass generalization.
I live in rural Illinois – “Hooterville” if you wish, and the people around me are very hard to trick. We want to see proof of any claim made and keep emotional rants out of it. We are largely traditional conservatives who feel that the neocons and liberals have ended up screwing up the country. Many of my neighbors believe that warmists are asking us to stop believing that God has dominion over the climate, and accept that man must fend for himself, trusting in their “immense scientific knowledge” instead. I personally think that a universe created by such an intelligent designer (rather than random events), needs no intervention from the beings that were created in that design to stay running it’s intended course, and our feeble attempts to do so are only generating social chaos.
Back in the metropolitan area of 100K population that I moved away from, folks tended to be more arrogant and agnostic, though their thought was much less critical. My media guided suburban neighbors (that actually talked to me) were hypnotized by the emotional rhetoric and accepted the propaganda without questioning it’s validity. After all, NASA said this stuff! They also made statements like: “You are what you drive!” so they lacked credibility in my eyes
Out here people watch much less TV and when we do it’s usually RFDTV, to learn about what we can do to maximize our rural life.
What is significant in my opinion, is that though the conservatively skeptic view is geographically widespread around here, the population is sparse in comparison to urban centers. That makes it the minority view.
It’s harder to convince folks who commune more with nature than mankind that man has any influence on the future of climate, be it bad or good. Folks who form their dogma from the media instead of experience and their elders are much more susceptible to the ‘call from authority’ and the ‘consensus’.
Why is it that not 100% of farmers and scientists believe that climate change is occurring? After all, climate change is occurring every minute of every day. People should know better than to conflate Global warming and climate change.
I think it’s all in what you qualify as ‘climate change’. My 90-year-old father just sees recent changes as the repeat of a cycle of weather that he’s already witnessed. He feels the climate in general has remained pretty much the same in his (Midwestern US) lifetime. Other people might claim that 5 warm years in a row means the climate has changed and several cool years after that constitutes another climate change, when they averaged out only a slight difference from the previous century. Like the difference in perspective when looking at the stock market over months as opposed to decades.
Why is it that all these studies are conducted by sociologists who haven’t a clue what changes climate. I would be inclined to believe an Inuit over a scientist on the number of polar bears and seals there are and I would definitely believe a farmer over a sociologist what is happening in climate. It tees me off to no end when I hear the 100% confidence that these me-too fund snaggers have that we are heading for thermageddon. How dare they talk about greater swings in weather and climate disaster when even climatologists have come around to the idea that these things are not increasing. Their stuff is all gruel from the ante-pause period. The more CAGW climatologists shut up, dumbstruck by the pause, the more these broken disciplines speak up.
The phrase used in their survey, “climate change is occurring” is positively Orwellian in its dishonesty and disingenuousness. Without a clear definition of climate change, it is totally meaningless. They may as well state that “the earth is turning”, or “the sun warms the earth”.
Real scientists just landed a vehicle on a comet, which I think is impressive.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the brightest minds went into physics, math, chemistry…”
(<a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100257206/climate-science-is-for-second-raters-says-worlds-greatest-atmospheric-physicist/"Richard Lindzen, Jan 2014)
Perhaps it is because farmers know from their grandaddies that it was much hotter in the 1930’s
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/iowa-much-hotter-in-1936/
My apologies if someone addressed it above but the “Climatologists 2012, (n=19)” I am very suspect of this sample and whether or not any statistically conclusion can be drawn. Viewing it as “human caused vs rest” the standard deviation would be: 11.5% or a 95 % confidence interval of (30%-76%) which is useless.
Not sure if one should consider lumping 1/2 or more into one category but that would look better for them. In addition, with n=19 and a 100% response rate I wonder exactly why so few and why such a high response rate. Would want to see the methodology for the Simple Random Sample.
Many commenters are scathing of this report. I think it is very interesting and wonder if any of the authors have a farming background or connection. THey had enough “nous” to ask the question of farmers and compare the results to scientists / climatologists. Further, as pointed out by several above, they demonstrate that the 97% figure is farm manure. I think a high five is in order.
And the climate obsessed *still* won’t question their assumptions.
Those farmers, what do they know …
The message from the article seemed to be that the scientistics had to better communicate the AGW story to the farmers. Actually it’s the farmers ( and every other intelligent being) that needs to better communicate to the scientists. If the believing scientists has come down from 97% to 50% maybe the message is starting to get through. In the unreal world of climate science I cannot believe how dumb and gullible academically smart people are.
Just give me a big grant and I’ll chant the popular mantra for you..I’ll show my brains if you show me the money… When the money has disappeared we might be surprised at the change of consensus.
So whatever happened to that 97% consensus? Even the scientists and climatologists surveyed gave “most of the climate warming is human caused” a measly 53%. Is that going to be the new slogan for AGW – “53% of scientists agree!”
53% sounds too much like election results.
“Our research suggests that this disparity in beliefs may cause agricultural stakeholders to respond to climate information very differently.” Uh oh, I guess farmers are funded by big oil as well! Wait, anyone…at all….who questions the Agenda 21 crisis of opportunity, aka, global warming, climate change, etc., is a (insert ad hominem attack)!
Perhaps Joni Ernest, the newly elected senator from the state of Iowa, will now ask the participating researchers from Iowa State University, to explain the basis for their condescending comments about American farmers.
Well, she cannot offer them her Hog services. They do not have any to remove.
Having worked at agricultural weather forecasting for many years, same story here in Australia
Farmers observe the weather, get on with their farming business and do not believe that humans
cause any global warming. Most think it is natural variation anyway!
Associate professor of natural resource social science? I didn’t know that natural resources were a society that could be studied, much less proclaimed to be a science. As a Purdue alumnus, I’m embarrassed.
A title like that screams “Teaching Assistant” for a blow-off general elective in the College of Liberal Arts. But was necessitated by the need for a Climate Change grant.
Title should read: “Taxi drivers and scientists divided over climate change”
Better yet: “People and government-funded pseudo-scientists divided over climate change”.
What about: Farmers and pig troughing witchdoctors divided over the amount of feed.
What struck me was, in the study they had farmers in one group and scientists and climatologists in the other. Does that mean that they believe that climatologists are not scientists? If that is the case, I agree. Additionally, how many real scientists were among the scientists and climatologists?
“Farmers are by necessity very focused on short-term weather, in-season decisions and managing immediate risks,” she said. “They’re thinking about when they can get in their field to do what they need to do, rather than looking 20 to 30 years down the road.”
It is hard for me to find farmers who are so focused upon their immediate crop that they disregard the future of their land. As a matter of fact, I find that farmers continually update their farming practices to achieve, not only a high yield with the present crop, but to address future crops: witness, crop rotation.
The only farmers who relentlessly degrade land by their farming practices seem to be farm land “renters” and tenant farmers. Not a high percentage of farmers over all.
It seems to me that the authors need to get out of their offices, put on some knee-high boots, and walk the farm land they are constantly referring to. The accompanying farmer will tell the academic what is going on. These authors are….well…not informed.