The importance of the messenger in climate change communication to farmers

Agriculture needs to mitigate its impacts and adapt to new environmental conditions. To this end, communicating climate change to farmers is essential but remains a challenge, since many stakeholders (e.g. public administration, sectoral stakeholders, environmentalists) engage with farmers, conveying diverse messages about climate change and the role of agriculture. Here we aim to analyse farmers’ perceptions of climate change and how these relate to their trust in different stakeholders. We conducted a survey with 167 livestock farmers across Spain, gathering data about their perceptions on climate change severity and origin, and to what extent its importance has been exaggerated. We also analysed farmers’ trust in different information sources, including farmers associations (i.e. breed associations, farmer organisations and cooperatives), agricultural organisations, technical publications, veterinarians, agricultural firms, government agencies, scientists, environmentalists, animal activists, and the media. Our results show that farmers believe climate change exists but a high proportion are sceptical about its origin and severity. Farmers’ trust in information sources influences their perception of climate change. Farmers who trust public institutions, environmentalists, animal activists, and the media are more likely to view climate change as human-driven and perceive its impacts as severe, rejecting claims of exaggeration. In contrast, those who trust veterinarians, cooperatives, agricultural firms, and farmer organisations tend to see climate change as a hybrid human-natural process and believe its impacts are overstated. The results highlight the need to improve the science-policy-farmers dialogue to make farmers more aware of the potential consequences of climate change on farming and trigger adaptation.