Mixed methods approach to understanding farmer and agricultural advisor perceptions of climate change and adaptation in Vermont, United States

ABSTRACT

The relationships among farmers’ belief in climate change, perceptions of climate-related risk, and use of climate adaptation practices is a growing topic of interest in U.S. scholarship. The northeast region is not well represented in the literature, although it is highly agricultural and will likely face climate-related risks that differ from those faced in other regions. We used a mixed methods approach to examine northeast farmers’ perceptions of climate change and climate-related risks over time, and perceived trade-offs associated with on-farm practices. Our investigation shows how northeastern farmers think about climate-risk, and what they are doing to address it.

KEYWORDS:

• Agriculture
• agroecology
• best management practices
• climate change
• risk

Acknowledgments

We thank the farmers and agricultural advisors who participated in this project, and the Vermont Agricultural Resilience in a Changing Climate team for their contributions to the 2013 and 2016 farmer survey, including Christopher Koliba, David Conner, E. Carol Adair, Stephanie Hurley, Linda Berlin, Juan Alvez, Joshua Faulkner, Kimberly Hagan, Martha Caswell, Katherine Westdijk, Heather Darby, and Yu-Shoiu Tsai. Florence Becot, Gary Keogh, Hannah M. Aitken, and Alan Howard assisted with data analysis. Meredith Niles and two anonymous reviewers provided valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ In this manuscript, we use the following definition of agroecological food systems: food systems that adequately manage and conserve ecological processes are socially just and economically viable (Gliessman 2015).