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Comment by drdeadringer | Hacker News Reader

Apparently I am out of a loop: Farmers are denying climate change? If my livelihood depends on good climate, how can I not notice a good climate going bad?

I'd like to understand. Is this something beyond wilful denial?

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Farmers generally aren't climate change deniers in my experience, and I meet a lot of farmers on a regular basis as I work for one of the largest AG equipment suppliers in the world in r&d where we are constantly out testing new products or tech on farmers fields.

They are practical, evidence based and extremely in-tune with anything that can affect their bottom line.

Looks like that might be changing: 2020 Farm Groups Moving To Address Climate Change : NPR

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/20/936603967/farmers-are-warming...

Though apparently that wasn't the case 8 years ago: Why Don’t Farmers Believe in Climate Change? - Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/07/farmers-clim...

It's a combination of factors. If your farm depends on water, and it's a drought, it's hard to think of the long term when your may not financially survive the next few years. Droughts and other natural disasters have also occurred through all of human history, so scientists have only been able to say "this might be related" instead of "it was definitely caused by" climate change up until the last few years.

There's also more than willful denial considering the amount of propaganda that tries to claim that climate change either isn't real or is grossly exaggerated (there are even efforts to claim that it will be beneficial). The channels that tend to push this also tend to be very popular in rural areas. This isn't even just a climate change things- the same groups of people claiming there's a labor shortage also try to deport anyone who doesn't look like them.

I think the parent — like most people (including myself until recently) — has a poor understanding of the professional makeup of rural communities.

There was never a period in American history where most rural people were farmers. That was a Jeffersonian daydream. In the colonial/early-American period, farms consisted of landowners, and a mix of slaves and poorly-paid employees. When slavery ended and the industrial revolution came along, tractors took over most of the work and the employees left for factories; the number of landowners (what we now call "farmers") is not very different now than in 1800.

Here's a census report on the actual careers of small-town America. Lot of community service (education, health care), a little manufacturing and retail… about what one might expect, really. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/blogs/201...

… so getting back to the point of climate change… on the one hand, since farmers don't make up the majority of rural communities, their opinions on climate change don't mean much politically. On the other hand, they do have a very direct and personal effect on the climate w/r/t soil practices (erosion, pesticides, etc), and there are some positive signs on that front.

I did a little more Googling and it's, of course, more nuanced than I thought. Even in Iowa, which is probably more conservative than most places, the attitudes are shifting:

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/iowa-farm-and-rural-l...

I think a big difference is the belief of the cause of climate change, a large percentage of farmers believes it's mostly or partly due to natural variations.

Corporate farming (or big ag) outnumbers family farms to the point where family farmers are politically insignificant compared to corporate farming. With that in mind, "their" (i.e., corporate farms) livelihoods depend more on government subsidies than good climate.

I don't think you can generalize how family farmers feel about climate change, or even if they're single issue voters that may or may not care about something else more. Corporate farms are big business though, and big business tends to vote conservative in the US, and conservatives in the US tend to not take action to fix climate change. These two things may be related, too.

I think the feeling is that farmers tend to be right leaning and conservative politically and are thought to be of the mindset to deny that climate change is real.

6:23 https://youtu.be/ig_YIEYk81U

PBS Frontline, Betting on Trump: Water (2017)

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