Understanding Climate Change and Farming: Scientific and Farmers' Constructions of ‘Global Warming’ in Relation to Agriculture

Abstract

The construction and translation of ‘global warming’ in relation to agriculture is discussed. Scientific construction of global warming as an issue is examined in relation to farmers' understanding of scientific discourse and their translation of that understanding through lay knowledge of their own locally specific experiences and contexts. The author demonstrates that scientific researchers construct environmental issues such as global warming in ways which effectively, if unintentionally, marginalise alternative knowledge forms and configure farmers in relation to scientific knowledge forms. Attempts are made to ‘translate’ scientific understanding into farmers' knowledge systems through media constructed for consumption by farmers. However, farmers negotiate between scientific knowledge and situated experiential knowledges, and they also differentiate between ‘distant’ and ‘local’ forms of scientific knowledge.