Farmers and Climate Change

A nuanced and empathetic account of the social risks faced by farmers navigating the effects of climate change in an era of political tensions.

Farmers and ranchers are on the front lines of climate change, but many of them, like other rural Americans, are sceptical of climate science. Yet with droughts and wildfires becoming more severe, threatening their livelihoods, farmers have little choice but to respond. Margiana Petersen-Rockney offers a vivid account of how farmers manage the impacts and politics of climate adaptation in agricultural America, where even the acknowledgment of climate can lead to social exile.

Drawing on richly textured data from more than seven years of research in northern California, Petersen-Rockney explores prevailing narratives of rural people and farmers as resistant to change, reorienting environmental policy scholarship and illuminating opportunities to increase the pace and scale of climate action. Farmers and Climate Change is the first book to examine how farmers and the communities and public staff who support them navigate this contested terrain, and how climate adaptation decisions affect their livelihoods, families, communities, and the climate itself.