Farmer Climate Adaptation Strategies in Rice-Growing Areas of the Southern United States

The long and still evolving adoption of innovation literature has deepened our understanding of various factors shaping farmer climate adaptation strategies, or the extent to which farmers adopt more sustainable varieties and practices. Qualitative and focused quantitative studies point to a broader range of factors potentially influencing climate adaptation strategies within more specific or local contexts. Our study attempts to combine insights from the extant literature with those of key informants, to develop a multi-module survey instrument designed to assess factors shaping rice growers’ adoption of more sustainable varieties and farming practices. Our instrument is grounded in a sociological perspective, and was developed in connection with an extensive review of the evolving literature in various domains of sustainable agricultural production. Our survey considers broader relational and structural factors, often absent in existing technology adoption studies, along with individual grower and farm characteristics and attributes of innovations. The modules include questions capturing growers’ farming history; land ownership; personal and organizational networks; future orientation; knowledge of and attitudes toward climate change and sustainable agricultural practices; perceptions of science, technology, and research; views on what constitutes a ‘good farmer’; and grower socio-demographic and farm characteristics. Combined, the data from these modules will enable us to develop and test more comprehensive models of factors shaping farmer climate adaptation strategies. The instrument will be administered in the first quarter of 2025 to a representative sample of rice growers in the Southern United States. Our paper presentation will discuss the lessons learned from our review of the literature and key informant interviews, the development and finalization of the survey instrument, along with initial findings supporting or questioning the role of diverse factors considered critical in shaping adoption decisions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of research and policies related to sustainable agricultural production.