Farmer identities: facilitating stability and change in agricultural system transitions

ABSTRACT The need for institutional change posed by anthropogenic global warming is now well-recognized, and this is particularly the case for agri-food systems, which are both significant contributors to climate change, and highly vulnerable to its impacts. The importance of identity to institutional change is well-recognized in various areas of scholarship, although in the study of institutional responses to climate change this key driver is less often discussed. In this study, we seek to create space for doing so, by focusing on the identity work of a sample of farmers in Alberta, Canada, as they navigate this moment of sector uncertainty. We show how farmer identities are becoming destabilized as producers attempt to accommodate growing environmental and climatological concerns, with many productivist farmers seeking to deflect sources of identity disconfirmation, while post-productivist farmers engage in active community-building and information seeking to support the formation of a new identity.