Farmers as climate citizens

Abstract

This article explores the potential for farmers to become climate citizens. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we analyse how Norwegian farmers relate to climate change in their everyday farming practises. After discussing the concepts of environmental and ecological citizenship, we propose the climate citizen approach to meet the challenges that climate change poses to agriculture. Until now, Norwegian farmers’ response to climate change has been limited. Major changes in farming practises seem unlikely without incentives from the state. A climate citizen approach can help balance a response to institutional regulations and policies with the individual moral obligation to take personal and non-reciprocal responsibility for the planet. In order to influence how farmers might incorporate climate change awareness into their everyday practises, policy makers should take existing norms and values in the agricultural community into account and adopt clear and manageable instruments to reward farmers for taking adaptive measures.

Keywords:

• Climate change
• agriculture
• citizenship
• responsibility
• Norway

Acknowledgements

We are greatly indebted to Grey Osterud for her valuable comments, proof reading and criticism of this article. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and suggestions how to clarify our arguments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The survey was sent to a random sample of 1,500 farmers selected from 44,770 active farms in Norway. A total of 646 farmers responded, giving a response rate of 43.5 per cent (Aasprang 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Norges Forskningsråd [project number 199316].