Project Lead: Masha Vernik, UW Environmental and Forest Sciences

Data Science Lead: Curtis Atkisson

As seasons become less predictable and extreme weather events become more intense and frequent, farmers learn to adapt. Adaptation can mean anything from building new infrastructure that’s out of a flood zone to installing improved irrigation lines; it can mean shifting crop plans or building deeper relationships with customers and fellow farmers. But for some farmers, adaptation is easier than for others.

What influences the challenges farmers face when adapting to climate change? To answer this question, I’m building a model to explain farmers’ ratings of how challenging adapting to climate change has been for them. Specifically, I’ll be looking to see if farmers of various sizes and land tenure arrangements (renters vs. owners) have different experiences with adapting to climate change, controlling for their level of exposure to climate impacts. I picked these factors to explore based on 28 interviews I conducted with organic vegetable farmers in western WA about how they’re experiencing and adapting to climate change. The farm-level data was collected as part of a national survey of organic farmers by the Organic Farming Research Foundation for the 2022 National Organic Research Agenda, in conjunction with the Organic Seed Alliance for the 2022 State of Organic Seed Report.