Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change in Context: Toward a Political Economy of Relevance

Abstract

Sociologists commonly hypothesise that experiencing the impacts of climate change will lead actors, including farmers, to desire to address climate change. It is increasingly clear that farmers can detect the regional biophysical expressions and impacts of climate change. However, this has not led farmers to desire to take action on climate change. This begs the question: how then are farmers interpreting these experiences? We argue that political‐economic context, the structural conditions of capitalist production, contributes to how farmers perceive and understand the impacts of climate change. We draw from our novel political economy of relevance theoretical framework and apply this framework to a sample of over 100 qualitative interviews with Iowa and Indiana row‐crop farmers. We focus on their experiences with heavy rain events, a key impact of climate change in the Midwest. Our findings suggest that farmers become aware of, interpret and respond to heavy rain events within the context of capitalist production. This leads most farmers to see heavy rain events as barriers to achieving capitalist goals, rather than as signals of the reconsider climate scepticism or the need to mitigate contributions to climate change.

Interregional comparative analysis of farmers’ perceptions and expectations of climate change

“…According to studies conducted by Wiles (2012) in the United Kingdom and Houser et al (2019) in the United States, farmer predictions regarding climate change are largely consistent with scientific studies. From this perspective, farmers' observations of changes in meteorological events (temperature, precipitation, humidity, etc.)…”

Thinking beyond the ecological present: Critical theory on the self-problematization of society and its transformation

“…Scenarios where the subject is motivated on the basis of professional or ideological affiliation 'not to know' changes occurring in environmental conditions have been well documented by research. The work of Houser et al (2019; see also Houser et al, 2017), for instance, offers considerable empirical evidence of a selective perceiving and strategic lack of knowledge of the various effects of climate change. Houser et al (2019) document how farmers in the Midwestern corn belt region of the United States, for example, make sense of the regional biophysical impacts of climate change on their daily lives and note the structuring influence of the political-economic context of farmers' perceptions of climate-related changes as chiefly 'barriers to achieving capitalist goals' (Houser et al, 2017).…”

Heavy Precipitation Impacts on Nitrogen Loading to the Gulf of Mexico in the 21st Century: Model Projections Under Future Climate Scenarios

“…DIN loading in May is the best predictor of the areal extent of summer hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico (Turner et al., 2006). As heavy precipitation would increase in spring (Figure S8a in Supporting Information S1), Corn Belt farmers are likely to intensify their drainage practices (Singh et al., 2009) and increase N inputs (Houser et al., 2019) while attempting to maintain production levels, multiplying the effects of climate change alone on N loads and hypoxia in summer. Particularly in the Midwest, the majority of N fertilizer is applied before crops are planted.…”