Six languages for a risky climate: how farmers react to weather and climate change

摘要: How climate-sensitive actors—like commercial farmers—perceive, understand, and react to weather climate stimuli will ultimately determine the success or failure of change adaptation policies. Many studies have characterized farmers’ risk perceptions farming practices, but few evaluated in situ decision-making processes that link (or fail link) adaptive behaviors. Here, we use a novel methodology reveal patterns by grain farmers South Africa. We structure, linguistically code, statistically analyze causal relationships described 30 mental models interviews. show framing risks strongly predicts their adoption conservation agriculture (CA)—climate-resilient best practices reduce shorter-term financial longer-term agronomic risks. These describe using six exhaustive mutually exclusive languages: agricultural, cognitive, economic, emotional, political, survival. The prevalence agricultural economic language only weakly CA practice, whereas emotional farm survival limits adoption. terms impedes adaptations are likely improve such longer term. But this is not necessarily indicative current circumstances. It represents consequential mindset rather than state it may go undetected more conventional relying on direct survey interview questions.