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Friend or foe? UK farmers' relationships with the weather

Osborne, R. and Evans, Nick (2019) Friend or foe? UK farmers' relationships with the weather. Journal of Rural Studies, 72 (Dec 19). pp. 205-215. ISSN 0743-0167

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Abstract

Climate change will exacerbate the future challenges posed to sustaining food security in the UK. More frequent and intense extreme weather events will impact upon the ability of British farm systems to maintain or increase levels of food production. However, in this cultural context, relatively little is known about farmers' relationship with ‘the weather’, formed from their daily experiences of it. This paper engages at the farm scale to explore farmers' information-seeking behaviour about the weather, which influences their current risk perceptions of extreme weather conditions, through exploration of their assemblages of meteorological and local knowledge. Views are collected using a broad-based quantitative scoping survey combined with in-depth qualitative research with farmers located in the Welsh Marches border region of England and Wales, UK. Findings demonstrate that different types of farmer-weather relationships can be recognised depending upon the way weather and climate information is sought and utilised. We present a typology of farmer-weather relationships, categorising farmers as: analysts; intuitives; fatalists; or disengagers; with regards to the way in which they seek and interpret weather and climate information. This typology may assist the formation of new weather and climate services through an improved understanding of how lay and scientific knowledges interact in practice.

Item Type: Article
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© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Staff and students at the University of Worcester can access the full-text of the online published article via the UW online library search. External users should check availability with their local library or Interlibrary Requests Service.

Uncontrolled Discrete Keywords: climate change, farmers, extreme weather, local knowledge, risk perception, climate services, UK agriculture
Divisions: College of Health, Life and Environmental Sciences > School of Science and the Environment
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Depositing User: Nick Evans
Date Deposited: 12 Nov 2019 12:10
Last Modified: 23 Apr 2021 01:00
URI: https://eprints.worc.ac.uk/id/eprint/8867

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