If you follow the discussion surrounding climate change in Iowa and its potential consequences for agriculture, perhaps these data don’t surprise you. My observation is that the industry has been reluctant to come around to the idea that this is a human-caused phenomenon, and this includes its practitioners. There’s already been quite a lot of social science that examines this, but overall farmers seem to be about ½ to 2/3 as likely as the general population to agree that human beings are a driver of climate change.
This is not to say that farmers aren’t adapting to changing weather. The same day as the Whiterock meeting, I happened upon this recently published paper: Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change in Social Context: Toward a Political Economy of Relevance (1). Farmers from Iowa (53) and Indiana (51) were interviewed to explore how the political-economic structural context of climate change influenced their perception of and response to heavy rain events.
