Farmers Adapt to Climate Change Irrespective of Stated Belief in Climate Change or Farm Advisor Reinforcement of (Dis)belief: A Case Study in Northern California

Abstract

Farmers are front line workers in the climate crisis. As in many parts of the world, climate change impacts like droughts and wildfires are becoming everyday experiences that natural resource-dependent communities must grapple with. This article draws on ethnographic methods, including over 100 interviews with crop and livestock farmers and institutional actors, to query climate change experience, belief, and response in Siskiyou County in rural northeastern California. I find that farmers recognize and describe changes in climate that align with meteorologic evidence of climate signals emerging above the noise of weather variability. Farmers often chronicle these changes in terms of weather cycles and harsh geographies. Local public farm advisors, like Cooperative Extension Advisors and USDA staff, echo these beliefs, which builds rapport with many farmers, while hindering the development of programming, including potential climate-related technical and financial assistance available to a broader set of farmers. Farmers respond to climate change impacts with a range of adaptations, irrespective of their stated belief in climate science. Findings bolster growing evidence that climate change belief and action are not tightly coupled, supporting efforts to retire the currently dominant knowledge-deficit paradigm of farmer climate change programming. Rather than focusing on trying to convince farmers of climate science - or even convince farm advisors themselves - this study suggests that more culturally appropriate interventions that skip belief and focus on action and outcomes could be more effective in increasing the pace and scale of farmer climate action.