Envisioning New Roles for Land-Grant University Extension: Lessons Learned from Climate Change Outreach in the Midwest

Recent surveys with farmers, Extension personnel, and agricultural advisors reveal interesting findings about climate change beliefs and who people trust for climate related information. Based on these results this article discusses a new direction for land-grant university Extension and research in addressing issues related to climate change and agriculture

Benefits to Qualitative Data Quality with Multiple Coders: Two Case Studies in Multi-coder Data Analysis

Qualitative research methods contend with debates surrounding subjectivity and bias. Researchers use a variety of techniques to help ensure data trustworthiness. One such technique is to involve multiple coders in data analysis. The deliberative nature of codebook development among multiple coders produces rich data analysis that may not otherwise be achieved with a single (or even two) researcher(s). In this manuscript, we make a plea for researchers and journals to include data analysis procedures and descriptions in published literature. In addition, we illustrate minimal reporting of qualitative data analysis processes through a synthesis of 21 years of agricultural best management practice adoption literature. We present two rural agricultural case studies on multi-coder team codebook development and intercoder reliability processes specific to interviews, focus groups, and content analysis. Overall, we argue that multi-coder teams can improve data quality, and reporting data analysis procedures can mitigate implications of subjectivity in qualitative methods

Thinking Outside the Box Turtle: Public Perceptions of an Imperiled Species

Eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) experience negative impacts from human activities. Collection for the pet trade or mortalities caused by lawn mowers and vehicles are detrimental to populations, which have experienced rapid decline in Indiana. Understanding perceptions and attitudes held about species can help outreach. This study aims to observe how perceptions and fear response differ between a) genders, b) contact with box turtles, and c) conservation group membership. Mail surveys were administered to 1,378 residents of the Blue River Watershed in Southern Indiana. Respondents rated box turtles on 11 semantic differential pairs and reported their agreement towards a series of Likert-scale questions that measured conservation and fear related attitudes. While fear response was relatively low across groups, women had had a significantly higher fear response (1.71 out of 5) than men (1.53). Women had higher agreement that box turtles are important to the Blue River ecosystem (4.08 vs. 3.77). Respondents who had encountered a box turtle associated box turtles with positive phrases and had higher agreement to ecosystem importance (3.94 vs. 3.39). Members of conservation groups had significantly higher agreement to ecosystem importance (4.25) and approval of government spending on box turtle conservation (3.31) compared to non-members (3.81 and 2.94). There was no correlation between level of fear response and recognition of ecosystem importance. Exposure to box turtles can be a mechanism of instilling positive perceptions of the species. Outreach may not need to address “fearful” perceptions of this species for individuals to still value box turtle conservation

Synthesizing Conservation Motivations and Barriers: What Have We Learned from Qualitative Studies of Farmers’ Behaviors in the United States?

Since 2011, qualitative studies examining adoption of conservation practices and programs (CPPs) have burgeoned. This article presents a systematic review of all U.S.-based qualitative investigations into CPP adoption since 1996. We found three themes are discussed primarily as motivating adoption: farmer characteristics, environmental awareness, and trust in information sources. Four themes are discussed primarily as barriers to adoption: farm management, negative perceptions of a conservation practice, perceptions that adoption is a risk, and land tenure. Four themes were discussed as both motivations and barriers: economic factors, social norms, perceptions of government programs, and farm characteristics. Overall, we found farmers’ economic and management needs and their perceived and actual limitations to conservation behavior influenced adoption. Implications of our findings for policymakers and practitioners include promoting systems-based conservation strategies and stressing the benefits of conservation practices

Adaptive Targeting: Engaging Farmers to Improve Targeting and Adoption of Agricultural Conservation Practices

Targeting of agricultural conservation practices to cost‐effective locations has long been of interest to watershed managers, yet its implementation cannot succeed without meaningful engagement of agricultural producers who are decision makers on the lands they farm. In this study, we engaged 14 west‐central Indiana producers and landowners in an adaptive targeting experiment. Interviews carried out prior to targeting provided rich spatial information on existing conservation practices as well as producers' preferences for future conservation projects. We targeted six of the most accepted conservation practices using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool and spatial optimization using a genetic algorithm approach. Fairly optimal conservation scenarios were possible with even the most limiting constraints of farmer‐accepted practices. We presented in follow‐up interviews a total of 176 conservation practice recommendations on 103 farm fields to 10 farmers whose lands were targeted for conservation. Primary findings indicated producers were interested in the project, were open to hearing recommendations about their lands, and expressed a high likelihood of adopting 35% of targeted recommendations. Farmers generally viewed the interview process and presentation of results quite favorably, and the interviews were found to build trust and make the targeting process more acceptable to them.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112239/1/jawr12336.pd

Adoption, Maintenance and Diffusion of Stormwater Best Management Practices: Rain Barrels

Urbanization increases the volume of stormwater runoff from homes, businesses and other paved areas of the urbanized landscape. Unable to infiltrate into the ground, stormwater is directed to facilities that can easily become overloaded and cause a variety of water quality issues. This study aims to assess urban homeowners’ motivations to adopt and maintain rain barrels, a stormwater best management practice (BMP), and evaluate how this BMP diffuses throughout a community. This research took place in the Great Bend of the Wabash River (Lafayette-West Lafayette, Indiana) and Salt Creek (Valparaiso, Indiana) watersheds and featured a mail survey of 571 residents, site performance evaluations of 130 rain barrels, a “windshield” assessment of 242 rain barrels, and 31 in-person interviews. Our results show that 88% of homeowners in the Great Bend of the Wabash River watershed have maintained their rain barrels after two years and 65% of homeowners in Salt Creek watershed after 5 years. One of the biggest issues homeowners had with maintaining their rain barrels were issues with water pressure. We also found that 94% of rain barrel owners maintain a flower or vegetable garden and their primary motivation for adopting a rain barrel was to reduce water use for their yard or house. Outreach may need to focus more on the importance of maintaining the rain barrels as well as emphasizing the connection between rain barrels and personal gardening

Do advisors perceive climate change as an agricultural risk? An in-depth examination of Midwestern U.S. Ag advisors’ views on drought, climate change, and risk management

Through the lens of the Health Belief Model and Protection Motivation Theory, we analyzed interviews of 36 agricultural advisors in Indiana and Nebraska to understand their appraisals of climate change risk, related decision making processes and subsequent risk management advice to producers. Most advisors interviewed accept that weather events are a risk for US Midwestern agriculture; however, they are more concerned about tangible threats such as crop prices. There is not much concern about climate change among agricultural advisors. Management practices that could help producers adapt to climate change were more likely to be recommended by conservation and Extension advisors, while financial and crop advisors focused more upon season-to-season decision making (e.g., hybrid seeds and crop insurance). We contend that the agricultural community should integrate long-term thinking as part of farm decision making processes and that agricultural advisors are in a prime position to influence producers. In the face of increasing extreme weather events, climatologists and advisors should work more closely to reach a shared understanding of the risks posed to agriculture by climate change

Conversations with non-choir farmers: Implications for conservation adoption. Report for the Walton Family Foundation

The following report documents the results and implications for the study, “Conversations with non-choir farmers: Implications for conservation adoption”. We conducted 10 in-person focus groups with farmers (IN=5; IA=3; IL=2) and three online focus groups with non-operating landowners (NOLs) who own land in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. This research sought to answer the following research questions: 1) What are viable strategies beyond what WFF is currently investing in to promote agricultural practices that that reduce nutrient runoff? 2) How and under what conditions can policies help to change farmer and landowner behavior? What are potential barriers, particularly resistance from the agricultural sector? 3) What do Corn Belt farmers think about the limits to voluntary conservation? Do they see a need to think beyond voluntary conservation? 4) What suggestions do Corn Belt farmers have for how to motivate wide-spread adoption of conservation practices to improve water quality? 5) How could new policies and incentives be tied to existing funding streams (e.g., Farm Bill) or other financial incentives? The focus group questions were designed to foster participants’ discussions of their perceptions on seven topics related to the research questions: 1) regulation; 2) conservation barriers; 3) market-based policies; 4) conservation targeting; 5) motivations for widespread conservation adoption; 6) communication networks; and 7) certification programs and private sector funding for conservation. The following pages include data from the 13 focus groups – 10 with farmers and 3 with NOLs. We conclude with implications of our findings

The effects of serious gaming on risk perceptions of climate tipping points

A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel approaches, especially in policy domains with long time horizons like climate change. Serious games offer promising opportunities in this regard, but empirical research on game effects and games’ effectiveness in supporting science-policy engagement remains limited. We investigated the effects of a role-playing simulation game on risk perceptions associated with climate tipping points among a knowledgeable and engaged audience of non-governmental observers of the international climate negotiations and scientists. We analysed its effects on concern, perceived seriousness, perceived likelihood and psychological distance of tipping points, using pre- and post-game surveys, debriefing questions and game observations. Our findings suggest that the game reduced the psychological distance of tipping points, rendering them more ‘real’, proximate and tangible for participants. More generally, our findings indicate that role-playing simulation games, depending on their design and future orientation, can provide effective science-policy engagement tools that allow players to engage in future thinking and corresponding meaning making.publishedVersio

Useful to Usable: Developing Usable Climate Science for Agriculture

The Useful to Usable (U2U) project was a six-year research and extension project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to provide both useful and usable climate information for the agricultural (corn) sector in the Midwestern United States. The project adopted an extensive co-production of knowledge and decision-making approach that involved intense iteration with potential end-users, including farmers and a variety of pro- fessional agricultural advisors, through focus groups and surveys, feedback at outreach events, and frequent informal interactions to develop both decision support tools and delivery mechanisms that met stakeholder needs. This overview paper for this special issue illustrates some key ways that the co-production process informed the overall project. Subsequent papers in the special issue span the different objectives of the U2U project, including social, climate, and agronomic sciences. A brief overview of these papers is pre- sented here