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Research finds farmers cautious about shifting management for extreme weather

New research is studying how much of a risk farmers are willing to take to adapt to a changing climate.  

Natalie Loduca with the University of Illinois’ Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics analyzed grower perspectives as part of her graduate work at Michigan State University.

“We wanted to understand how farmers are perceiving risk, if they’re noticing that there’s a change in climate and what their plans are going forward, how they want to handle that risk,” she explains.

She says farmers expected warming in the Midwest to increase crop yields, but also bring more extreme flooding and drought.

“They are thinking about irrigation potentially moving forward, but it can be costly to invest in that,” she says. “There were a lot of people thinking about splitting their tile drainage, and then there’s just concern of if they split it, will they accidentally go too far in the other direction?”

Additional analysis is underway to identify what investments and strategies, like insurance, drought-tolerant hybrids, or other risk-management tools, farmers are most likely to adopt.

Researchers say because of the wide variability in risk preferences, some farmers are less likely to make changes on their own. They suggest new policies encouraging cost-effective incentive programs for those farmers to be more resilient.