1. Friend or foe? UK farmers' relationships with the weather.
- Author
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Osborne, Rebecca and Evans, Nick
- Subjects
WEATHER & climate change ,SCIENTIFIC knowledge ,WEATHER ,METEOROLOGICAL services ,RISK perception - Abstract
Climate change will exacerbate the future challenges posed to sustaining food security in the UK. More frequent and intense extreme weather events will impact upon the ability of British farm systems to maintain or increase levels of food production. However, in this cultural context, relatively little is known about farmers' relationship with 'the weather', formed from their daily experiences of it. This paper engages at the farm scale to explore farmers' information-seeking behaviour about the weather, which influences their current risk perceptions of extreme weather conditions, through exploration of their assemblages of meteorological and local knowledge. Views are collected using a broad-based quantitative scoping survey combined with in-depth qualitative research with farmers located in the Welsh Marches border region of England and Wales, UK. Findings demonstrate that different types of farmer-weather relationships can be recognised depending upon the way weather and climate information is sought and utilised. We present a typology of farmer-weather relationships, categorising farmers as: analysts; intuitives; fatalists; or disengagers; with regards to the way in which they seek and interpret weather and climate information. This typology may assist the formation of new weather and climate services through an improved understanding of how lay and scientific knowledges interact in practice. • The importance of examining weather at the farm scale. • Investigating farmers' local knowledge of weather and climate change based on extreme events. • Recognition of four types of farmer-weather relationship, demonstrating a convergence of local and scientific knowledge. • An exposition of farmers' information-seeking behaviour regarding weather. • Farmer-weather types can assist development of weather and climate services through better targeting of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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