Agricultural framing in California’s Central Valley: Farming values and climate change policy

ABSTRACT

In the absence of national policy to address climate change in the United States, scholars shifted focus to examine state and local level actions. Mayors, city managers, and city councils are now central actors in the climate policy domain. Unlike large, liberal cities on the Coasts, less is known about climate policy decisions in more rural and agricultural areas like the Central Valley of California. These municipalities present an interesting political climate and contain unique geo-physical characteristics as the agricultural center of California. This project analyzes content from city plans along with surveys of municipal staff to capture the ways that communities in the Central Valley tap into environmental policymaking using agricultural framing. Specifically, it examines whether two specific agricultural frames, entrepreneurial farming and agrarian values, make their way into climate change programs and whether these localities can stay on par with the rest of the state despite their different values. Findings reveal that agricultural framing is present within municipal climate change documents and that despite an expectation for more of an industrial/entrepreneurial focus, there are also agrarian ideas present, suggesting the importance of both ideas for agricultural regions and a continued need to study frames to help grow climate policy in rural and agricultural areas. This preliminary project explores agricultural framing in the context of climate change in the Central Valley as it relates to climate policy action with broader implications for urban and rural governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Agricultural framing
• Rural climate policy
• Municipal planning
• Central Valley

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank their colleagues at the Western Political Science Association for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the piece. The author would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions during the review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).