Risk tolerance and climate concerns predict transformative agricultural land use change

CONTEXT

Research and policy continue to highlight the potential importance of transformative adaptations (involving wholly new systems, processes, or locations for activities) for climate and other future changes, including in agriculture. Despite this, there are few examples of transformative changes in action and insufficient understanding about the drivers that enable or facilitate transformative change.

OBJECTIVE

We assess the extent to which farmers have implemented transformative or incremental land use changes on their farms over the previous ten years and their likelihood to implement both types of changes in the future, with a particular emphasis on respondents' patience (i.e. low discount rates) and risk preferences, which we expect to have differing effects on change type.

METHODS

We utilize data from a large-scale, Internet-based survey of farmers, foresters, and growers from across New Zealand. Participants were recruited through industry bodies and government databases, and the final sample includes 4458 respondents representing all major activities in New Zealand's primary sector and all 65 districts in the country. The sample is broadly representative by both demographics and industry.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION

We find that transformative land use changes are indeed rare - only 15 % of farmers had implemented transformative land use changes in the past, and only 11 % intended to implement them in the future. Furthermore, transformative land use changes are more common in some industries than others, with the arable sector having the highest levels of transformative change; in contrast, incremental change is common across all sectors. Surprisingly, individual patience was not generally associated with actual or intended adaptations, but risk tolerance was a strong predictor of change. Furthermore, risk-tolerant individuals who also expressed climate change belief were significantly more likely to have already implemented transformative change.

SIGNIFICANCE

Given that transformative changes involve high risk and are often costly, these results highlight the importance of societal investment to foster transformative changes where needed, as many individuals – especially marginalized or under resourced producers – will have minimal capacity for their implementation. This work identifies the industries and characteristics of producers that may need the greatest investment to implement transformative changes to respond to a host of rapidly changing agricultural conditions.