Doctoral Dissertation Research: Weather Risk, Climate Adaptation and Farmer Decision Making in the Southwestern United States

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This project will focus on analyzing financial support and information available to different groups of farmers in the southwestern United States, all of whom are facing increasing weather challenges, especially in the form of water shortages. The project will analyze how different sets of resources and access to those resources may enhance farm resilience to ecological and economic challenges. By analyzing the institutional and social influences on farm decisions, the research will extend understandings of farmers' choices and the ways in which those decisions shape the farm landscape. It will also broaden understanding of how farmers in the industrialized world deal with climatic change. The research will investigate how U.S. farm policy may be an effective tool for decreasing farm vulnerability to weather risks. It will also highlight current access of underrepresented minority farmers to farm support programs. In addition, the project will assess the relative vulnerability of farmers of different ethnicities with a variety of farm production styles and sizes. As such, the project will analyze the differential effects of agricultural institutions across contrasting farm types, highlighting for whom U.S. farm policy may be effective in supporting responses to a variable climate. To offer farmers and policy-makers a deeper understanding of how differing access to resources may be affecting farms, the researchers will share the results of the research through presentations and a publication. The project builds on past research in network political ecology, applying the framework for the first time to industrialized agriculture. Network political ecology analyzes the system in which an actor, often a farmer, operates. It parses the influences on individuals' decisions and analyzes which factors have the greatest power over the decisions that are ultimately made. Factors may include such influences as economic shifts, ecological conditions and social context. The framework also determines how those factors interact in the production of decisions. The research will focus on the question: How do farmers' institutional ties, mediated by their network of social relations, shape their farming strategies in the face of current and future weather risks? Through a series of interviews with a variety of farmers in two New Mexico counties, the researchers will identify sets of farmer networks to analyze. Interviews will center on farmers' decisions and which factors have most significantly influenced those decisions. Farmers will aid the researchers in constructing their decision-making histories. The researchers will interview other key actors, such as extension agents and insurers, to gain additional information about how institutions shape farm decisions and how social relationships with individuals in institutions may affect the way farmers ultimately use information and resources. Interview data will be analyzed to determine how key decisions and their relationships to weather events differ among different networks of farmers. Particular attention will be paid to farmer decisions that result in highly positive outcomes for farms in years when weather presents significant challenges.