Techno-Optimism and Farmers’ Attitudes Toward Climate Change Adaptation

In industrialized societies, techno-optimism is a belief that human ingenuity, through improved science and technology, will ultimately provide remedies to most current and future threats to human well-being, such as diseases, climate change, and poverty. Here we examine: (1) whether techno-optimism is found among Midwestern corn and soybean farmers and (2) how this confidence in human ingenuity influences their support for climate change adaptation. By examining data from a survey of nearly 5000 grain farmers in the Midwestern U.S., we found that greater techno-optimism can reduce farmers’ support for climate change adaptation and increase their propensity to express a preference to delay adaptation-related actions. This study advances our understanding of how social and cognitive factors influence farmers’ attitude toward climate change. Findings from this study can also help extension educators to develop outreach programs that are sensitive to farmers’ views about the ability of science and technology to solve climate change-related issues

Improving Decision Support Systems with Machine Learning: Identifying Barriers to Adoption

Precision agriculture (PA) has been defined as a “management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production.” This definition suggests that because PA should simultaneously increase food production and reduce the environmental footprint, the barriers to adoption of PA should be explored. These barriers include: 1) the financial constraints associated with adopting DSS, 2) the hesitancy of farmers to change from their trusted advisor to a computer program often behaves as a black box, 3) questions about data ownership and privacy, and 4) the lack of a trained workforce to provide the necessary training to implement DSSs on individual farms. This paper also discusses the lessons learned from successful and unsuccessful efforts to implement DSSs, the importance of communication with end-users during DSS development, and potential career opportunities that DSSs are creating in PA

Rethinking ‘Responsibility’ in Precision Agriculture Innovation: Lessons from an Interdisciplinary Research Team

We examine the interactions, decisions, and evaluations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers tasked with developing an artificial intelligence-based agricultural decision support system that can provide farmers site-specific information about managing nutrients on their land. We answer the following research questions: (1) How does a relational perspective help an interdisciplinary team conceptualize ‘responsibility\u27 in a project that develops precision agriculture (PA)? and (2) What are some lessons for a research team embarking on a similar interdisciplinary technology development project? We show that how RI is materialized in practice within an interdisciplinary research team can produce different understandings of responsibility, notions of measurement of ‘matter,’ and metrics of success. Future interdisciplinary projects should (1) create mechanisms for project members to see how power and privilege are exercised in the design of new technology and (2) harness social sciences as a bridge between natural sciences and engineering for organic and equitable collaborations

Who Will Represent Societal Interests as the U.S. Government Steps Back from Agricultural Advise? Evidence from Michigan's Public and Private Sectors

Public agencies, such as agricultural extension have traditionally played a crucial role in transferring and diffusing information on Best Management Practices (BMPs) from research universities and experiment stations to farmers. They have also been instrumental in targeting incentives to facilitate farmers’ adoption of BMPs, which is critical to mitigate and prevent environmental pollution driven by agriculture. However, a reduction in these public organizations’ budgets and personnel has increasingly challenged their ability of to provide conservation advice. Meanwhile increasing commercialization of farming and farmers’ requirements for individually- tailored advice have cleared way for private sector advisors to fill this gap in service delivery. In this context, it is not clear who would represent broader societal interests (e.g. environmental conservation and water quality) as the U.S. government steps back from agricultural advice. This is especially true regarding the provision of conservation advice. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, this study examines the drivers and constraints to the provision of conservation advice in the state of Michigan. It focuses on the role of different types of knowledge intermediaries across the public-private divide to understand how shifting resources and roles shapes the dissemination of BMPs. It finds that overall private advisors will likely be able to fill the vacuum in service delivery of BMPs caused by a retrenchment in public sector’s activities. However, their ability to do so is critically dependent on three main factors: a) private advisors’ personal motivations to supply advice on BMPs, b) sustained government support for voluntary compliance programs and c) the development of a market for BMPs.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108179/1/Syed Maaz Gardezi Thesis SNRE 2014.pd

From the Editor

How can we build the momentum to act on climate change now, instead of seeing it as a problem of the future? One way is to acknowledge the disproportionate effects of climate change on people. Contributions in this special issue examine issues of power, ideology, and inequality, as these interact with people's social and environmental vulnerabilities. Research and interviews with leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of environmental and social justice, climate science, and rhetoric, discuss how examining the interaction between climate change and other forms of inequalities is critical for sustainability. Whether you are an academic, a practitioner, or an activist, my hope is that content in this special issue will activate your desire to act now.</p

Rethinking adaptive capacity: A study of Midwestern U.S. corn farmers

Global climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing agriculture and society in the 21st century. In the Midwest, the projected trend toward more extreme rainfall has meant that farm-level responses are needed to maintain or increase crop yield and reduce soil erosion. On a local level, farmers are at the forefront of responding to environmental change. Thus, it is critical to understand their ability to take suitable actions for reducing risks and transforming agriculture to a more resilient system. Adaptive capacity is a term that is often used to describe farmers’ ability to access financial and technical resources. Although these are important attributes of farmers’ capacity, scholarship on human behavior has identified socio-cultural factors, such as perceived risk and capacity as strong predictors of farmers’ decision making. Therefore, our understanding of farmers’ true capacities is limited by our inability to comprehensively understand social and behavioral factors that influence their decisions to ignore, cope or adapt to climate change-related risks. In this dissertation, I attempt to address this gap by integrating social and behavioral theoretical frameworks and statistical modeling approaches to assess how variations in institutional and environmental conditions can influence farmers’ adaptive capacity and their decision to use adaptive management practices.</p

Faith in Human Ingenuity, Farmers' Risk Perception, and Support for Climate Change Adaptation.

Poster presented at the sharing our science shaping our future: a workshop by & for Climate & Corn CAP next generation scientists, USDA Whitten Patio, Washington D.C. October 14th 2015

Spatially Representing Vulnerability to Extreme Rain Events Using Midwestern Farmers’ Objective and Perceived Attributes of Adaptive Capacity

Potential climate‐change‐related impacts to agriculture in the upper Midwest pose serious economic and ecological risks to the U.S. and the global economy. On a local level, farmers are at the forefront of responding to the impacts of climate change. Hence, it is important to understand how farmers and their farm operations may be more or less vulnerable to changes in the climate. A vulnerability index is a tool commonly used by researchers and practitioners to represent the geographical distribution of vulnerability in response to global change. Most vulnerability assessments measure objective adaptive capacity using secondary data collected by governmental agencies. However, other scholarship on human behavior has noted that sociocultural and cognitive factors, such as risk perceptions and perceived capacity, are consequential for modulating people's actual vulnerability. Thus, traditional assessments can potentially overlook people's subjective perceptions of changes in climate and extreme weather events and the extent to which people feel prepared to take necessary steps to cope with and respond to the negative effects of climate change. This article addresses this knowledge gap by: (1) incorporating perceived adaptive capacity into a vulnerability assessment; (2) using spatial smoothing to aggregate individual‐level vulnerabilities to the county level; and (3) evaluating the relationships among different dimensions of adaptive capacity to examine whether perceived capacity should be integrated into vulnerability assessments. The result suggests that vulnerability assessments that rely only on objective measures might miss important sociocognitive dimensions of capacity. Vulnerability indices and maps presented in this article can inform engagement strategies for improving environmental sustainability in the region.This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gardezi, Maaz, and J. Gordon Arbuckle Jr. "Spatially representing vulnerability to extreme rain events using midwestern farmers’ objective and perceived attributes of adaptive capacity." Risk Analysis 39, no. 1 (2019): 17-34, which has been published in final form at DOI: 10.1111/risa.12943. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.</p