Niles authors study finding policies worry farmers more than climate change
California farmers feel more threatened by climate policy than they do by climate change, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, found that the greatest climate risk Yolo County farmers believe they face in the future is not drought, water shortages, or temperature changes, but government regulations.
However, this view did not make them less likely to participate in government incentive programs that would help their climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.
“We found that the past matters,” said lead author Meredith Niles, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology and Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis. “Farmers’ past perceptions of different environmental policies had a larger impact on their climate change beliefs and policy behaviors than their actual experience with climate change.”
