Farmers and Climate Change: Agricultural Adaptation in an Age of Rural Polarization

Farmers and ranchers are on the front lines of climate change, but many of them, like other rural Americans, remain unconvinced by climate science. Yet with droughts and wildfires becoming more severe, 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.

Drawing on richly textured data from more than seven years of research in Northern California, Petersen-Rockney explores prevailing narratives of farmers as resistant to change, reorienting environmental policy scholarship and illuminating opportunities to increase the pace and scale of climate action. This 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.