10 pages., Via online journal., Development of natural resource user typologies has been viewed as a potentially
effective means of improving the effectiveness of natural resource management engagement
strategies. Prior research on Corn Belt farmers’ perspectives on climate change employed
a latent class analysis (LCA) that created a six-class typology—the Concerned, Uneasy,
Uncertain, Unconcerned, Confident, and Detached—to develop a better understanding of
farmer perspectives on climate change and inform more effective climate adaptation and
mitigation outreach strategies. The LCA employed 34 variables that are generally unobservable—beliefs about climate change, experience with extreme weather, perceived risks of
climate change, and attitudes toward climate action—to identify types. The research reported
in this paper builds on this typology of Corn Belt farmers by exploring 33 measures of observable farm enterprise characteristics, land management practices, and farmer demographics to
assess whether variations in these observable characteristics between the six farmer classes
display systematic patterns that might be sufficiently distinctive to guide audience segmentation strategies. While analyses detected some statistically significant differences, there were
few systematic, meaningful observable patterns of difference between groups of farmers with
differing perspectives on climate change. In other words, farmers who believe that anthropogenic climate change is occurring, that it poses risks to agriculture, and that adaptive action
should be taken, may look very much like farmers who deny the existence of climate change
and do not support action. The overall implication of this finding is that climate change
engagement efforts by Extension and other agricultural advisors should use caution when
looking to observable characteristics to facilitate audience segmentation. Additional analyses
indicated that the farmer types that tended to be more concerned about climate change and
supportive of adaptive action (e.g., Concerned and Uneasy) reported that they were more
influenced by key private and public sector actors in agricultural social networks. On the
other hand, farmers who were not concerned about climate change or supportive of adaptation (e.g., the Unconcerned, Confident, and Detached groups, comprising between one-third
and one-half of respondents) were less integrated into agricultural networks. This suggests that
Extension and other agricultural advisors should expand outreach efforts to farmers who are
not already within their spheres of influence.
13 pages, via Online journal, Natural resource advisors operate at a natural resource-climate nexus that presents opportunity for utilization of regionally relevant climate science and tools to support climate smart decision making among land managers. This opportunity, however, may be underutilized. In thousands of county offices across the country, USDA field staff with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA) interface with farmers on a daily basis to provide conservation technical assistance, farm loans, and disaster recovery assistance. In this study, we conducted a survey of NRCS field staff (n = 1,893) and a similar survey of FSA field staff (n = 4,621) to determine the following: (1) how concerned USDA field staff are with both general and specific climate and weather threats and their effect on agriculture and forestry, (2) what available climate and weather resources staff are currently using, (3) how these factors relate to USDA field staff's confidence and interest in playing the role of climate advisor, and (4) the differences that exist between NRCS and FSA field staff related to these research questions. We found that many USDA field staff are concerned about climate change in general and about several specific impacts, but fewer are confident in their ability to support land managers in addressing these impacts. Additionally, increased concern about climate threats was related to higher levels of climate and weather resource use and an increased desire to play the role of climate advisor, but was also related to lower levels of self-reported ability to play that role. These findings can be used to inform appropriate application of professional development opportunities and creation of tools and resources to improve professional uses of weather and climate information.
