Are long-term climate projections useful for on-farm adaptation decisions?

Abstract

The current literature on climate services for farmers predominantly focuses on seasonal forecasts, with an assumption that longer-term climate projections may not be suitable for informing farming decisions. In this paper, we explore whether certain types of long-term climate projections may be useful for some specific types of farming decisions. Through interviews with almond tree crop farmers and farm advisors in California, we examine how farmers perceive the utility and accuracy levels of long-term climate projections and identify the types of projections that they may find useful. The interviews revealed that farmers often perceive long-term climate projections as an extension of weather forecasts, which can lead to their initial skepticism of the utility of such information. However, we also found that when farmers were presented with long-term trends or shifts in crop-specific agroclimatic metrics (such as chill hours or summer heat), they immediately perceived these as valuable for their decision-making. Hence, the manner in which long-term projections are framed, presented, and discussed with farmers can heavily influence their perception of the potential utility of such projections. The iterative conversations as part of the exploratory interview questions, served as a tool for “joint construction of meaning” of complex and ambiguous terms such as “long-term climate projections,” “long-term decisions” and “uncertainty.” This in-turn supported a joint identification (and understanding) of the types of information that can potentially be useful for on-farm adaptive decisions, where the farmer and the interviewer both improvise and iterate to find the best types of projections that fit specific decision-contexts. Overall, this research identifies both the types of long-term climate information that farmers may consider useful, and the engagement processes that are able to effectively elicit farmers' long-term information needs.