Link to home

Cannot retrieve the URL specified in the Content Link property. For more assistance, contact your site administrator.

How to use outreach to help farmers adapt to climate change
Alison Robertson: Iowa State University; J. Arbuckle, Jr.: Iowa State University
<div>Outreach shares information with communities to enable them to adapt or mitigate challenging situations. Understanding the community with whom the information is shared is important to ensure the outreach is successful. Within the past few years, considerable research has been done in the Corn Belt through surveys of farmers, extension educators, and private crop advisors to understand their beliefs and attitudes regarding climate change and potential adaptive management strategies. The data suggest that due to political sensitivity surrounding climate change and its causes, direct outreach to farmers and advisors should focus on the impacts of climate change: weather extremes and associated problems such as pests and disease. Most farmers have experienced extreme weather events that impacted their production, thus outreach that addresses adaptation to extreme weather events and related impacts resonate with farmers. Moreover, research suggested that farmers are generally confident in their adaptation skills and are more responsive to outreach focused on ways to adapt to variable weather rather than discussion of climate change. The research also showed that extension is the most trusted source of information on climate change and dealing with extreme weather, among both farmers and advisors, and this should be capitalized on. Today, farmers are likely to go to private advisors, since there are fewer extension educators. Private advisors reported they depend on extension for reliable information on climate change. Thus, a potentially effective way to help farmers adapt to climate change is to foster relationships between extension and private industry and “train the trainer”.</div>

View Presentation