Bridging the spatial and cognitive dimensions of farmer climate adaptation

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines the decision-making process of farmers as they evaluate the possibilities of switching to new types of seeds that are adaptable to heterogeneous environments and climates. These hybrid staple crop varieties are the product of substantial effort, and technological advances in many regions have focused on developing crop varieties with earlier maturity periods. A combination of large-scale government subsidization of hybrid seeds and seed market liberalization have accompanied these technological advances, which results in a large and diverse array of seed choices. Many private farmers therefore make critical livelihood decisions, including both which seed varieties to plant and when to sow them, in a context characterized by uncertainty arising from both climate variability and changing seed technology available to them. The researchers on this project examine the extent to which farmers rely on past experiences and cognitive heuristics to make choices that promote food security. The project also contributes to the training and education of multiple students while advancing recommendations for private farmers and organizations that support agriculturists in diverse settings. This project develops a methodology to bridge the spatial and cognitive dimensions around the livelihood decisions of private farmers. Using a multi-scale modeling approach that combines physically based high-resolution land surface modeling with satellite data and machine learning, the researchers identify hotspots of soil moisture variability and precipitation extremes. The researchers also use satellite data of observed maize growth periods in these hotspots to create maps of sowing dates, growing season length, and yield outcomes for climate adaptive maize varieties. Combining these data products with surveys of smallholder farmers allows us to employ causal inference models to examine why farmers choose different seed varieties and sowing dates. The study devotes attention in particular to the ways that common heuristics and cognitive biases related to extreme weather events influence the decision-making of farmers. Contributing broadly to scholarship on human-environment interactions, this research provides new insight into the spatial and temporal uncertainty that smallholder farmers face and the cognitive processes that underlie critical food security decisions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.