Understanding Climate Change and Farming: Scientific and Farmers' Constructions of ‘Global Warming’ in Relation to Agriculture

Abstract

The construction and translation of 'global warming' in relation to agriculture is discussed. Scientific construction of global warming as an issue is examined in relation to farmers' understanding of scientific discourse and their translation of that understanding through lay knowledge of their own locally specific experiences and contexts. The author demonstrates that scientific researchers construct environmental issues such as global warming in ways which effectively, if unintentionally, marginalise alternative knowledge forms and configure farmers in relation to scientific knowledge forms. Attempts are made to 'translate' scientific understanding into farmers' knowledge systems through media constructed for consumption by farmers. However, farmers negotiate between scientific knowledge and situated experiential knowledges, and they also differentiate between 'distant' and local' forms of scientific knowledge.

Linking birds, fields and farmers

“…Contrast exists in the complexity of bird management by farmers (e.g. Section 3.2) who generally tend to combine their complex experiential knowledge with scientific knowledge (Holloway, 1999), as opposed to the relatively simple prescriptions in policies indicated a large degree of incompatibility between prescribed practices based on scientific knowledge and the more flexible and sensitive practices of farmers (Wynne, 1996;Burgess et al, 2000;Riley, 2006 and, more specifically for this case: Swagemakers, 2008).…”

On climate change and cultural geography: farming on the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, UK

“…Most relevant here is work by geographers that focuses on how farmers engage with and embody scientific knowledges and ways of knowing (Morris 2006;Riley 2008;Tsouvalis et al 2000), in particular work by Holloway (1999) who examines how climate change is perceived by farmers. Previous attempts to 'capture' localised knowledges-for example by examining how farmers adapt to climate change (see Helms et al 1996;Smit et al 1996;West and Vasquez-Leon 2003;Roncoli et al 2003)-have tended to view farmers in positivistic terms as rational agents who behave strategically and tactically in relation to their farming practices.…”

Agricultural turns, geographical turns: retrospect and prospect

“…Instead, emphasis is on the inseparability of nature and society and the need to explore cultures of nature(s); the spatially and temporally contingent ways in which people come to understand and apply meaning to nature and the environment (MacNaughton and Urry, 1998;van Koppen, 2000). This type of agri-cultural research has begun to uncover the different constructions of the environment amongst farmers, and particularly the contrasting meanings and understandings of nature, and the appropriate management of nature, between farmers and so-called environmental "experts", including those from conservation organisations and policy-makers (Carr and Tait, 1991;McEachern, 1992;Walsh, 1997;McHenry, 1998;Holloway, 1999).…”

“…Greater diversity is evident here than in the attitudinal and agri-environmental scheme focus of work on constructions of nature. Hence, research has been conducted on environmental risks (Wynne, 1996;Holloway, 1999), organic agriculture (Morgan and Murdoch, 2000) and precision farming technology (Gerber et al, 1998;Morris and Winter, 1999;Tsouvalis et al, 2000). One theme recurrent in all specific topic areas is how the locally specific knowledge of farmers, which is created in large part through the experience of working closely with the land, can be contrasted with the scientific knowledge of agricultural and environmental experts (Harrison et al, 1998) "Nature in general, and wetlands in particular, might be better aided if scientific conservation were to concede more ground to local knowledge and local specificity.…”

“…The observation that particular knowledge forms (notably, scientific) are privileged over others (local knowledges) within the context, for example, of the conventional agricultural industry (Holloway, 1999;Morgan and Murdoch, 2000) or policy debates about agri-environment schemes (Burgess et al, 2000), has lead some researchers to adopt actor network theory (ANT). This enables the different understandings and knowledges of agriculture that are held by different actors, be they farmers, local residents, environmentalists or policy-makers to be treated symmetrically, or on an equal basis, with no a priori distinctions between different categories (see Clark and Murdoch, 1997;Burgess et al, 2000).…”