By Jakob Christopherson
Background
A 2020 study found that 54% of surveyed rural citizens felt that climate change policy is important, as opposed to 69% of urban citizens (Diamond, Bonnie, and Rowe 2020). Yet, rural Americans stand to gain a lot from effective climate policy which in theory would lead to predictable weather conditions. Both harvesting and planting timetables are heavily influenced by rain, snow, and frost cycles. Thus, having unpredictable weather cycles leads to agriculture becoming much more risky and difficult, as one ill-timed frost or rain could wipe out an entire crop. Agriculture is the backbone of rural America and without it, life in rural areas would disappear as agriculture is the center of rural economies. Most of the operating costs of farming go toward local businesses within the community. For example, farmers will buy or have their machinery fixed at the local John Deere dealer or buy seed/fertilizer from the local seed dealer or buy insurance from the local insurance dealer. In 2020, it is reported that 19.7 million jobs will be provided by the agriculture industry in the US. Farmers also spend their earnings back within the community in a variety of ways such as eating at local restaurants, or grocery shopping. Those directly employed by farms also do this as well. Another overlooked aspect is how many states fund their schools–property tax. This is a prevalent issue within rural communities as a major proponent of funding a school district comes in the form of property tax and within these rural communities, a vast amount of the property is farmland. School districts typically have the power to set the public school property tax rate and if farmers are economically unstable, the odds of them voting to have a higher property tax lessen, thus leading to lower quality schools in rural America where a disparity in education already exists. Many rural Americans are also very involved in fishing, hunting, gardening, and hiking, with all of these activities being driven by the environment. Effective climate change policy would stand to benefit these activities that are so ingrained into the rural lifestyle.
Problem Statement & Analysis
I propose that the answer lies in how popular narratives surrounding climate change assign blame to rural citizens. Many rural Americans are very proud of being in agriculture and for someone to tell them that a core tenet of who they are as a person is ruining the planet and that they need to stop is not easy for rural Americans to hear. Thus, this leads to rural Americans being hesitant to buy into climate change policy as they are worried their way of life is going to be under attack. This may also put rural citizens on the attack against climate change policy and make it easier to influence them against climate change policy. For example, many rural Americans believed Trump when he claimed at his Des Moines rally in 2020 that the Green New Deal would ban cattle farming, even though this idea was nowhere within the Green New Deal. Another element of this issue stems from Americans having low trust in politicians and this inhibits their ability to support climate change policy. For example, in a study conducted by Diamond, Bonnie, and Rowe (2020), they found that many rural Americans supported the end goal of the Clean Water Act but were hesitant to fully support it due to being unsure how it may affect the business of farming. Also with the idea that farming may be a leading cause of global warming, rural Americans may worry that politicians will get the idea that eliminating farming is the natural solution. This distrust is then heightened by the nature of most climate change policies being proposed by the Democratic party, to which many rural citizens have disdain. A 2021 Morning Consult poll found that 65% of rural voters view the Democratic party negatively. The same poll even found that only 23% of voters felt that the Democratic Party cared more about their community than the Republicans. This spells out big troubles for gaining support for climate change policy as one of the main methods is an elaboration on how the consequence of climate change could impact people’s communities.
Solutions
One solution that could have the potential to raise rural support for climate change policy is partnering farmers with researchers. This has the potential to help in two ways. Encouraging farmers to be more involved in the science behind climate change, would lead to a better understanding, building support for climate change policy and trust in those conducting the studies. The other outcome could be a success in these studies resulting in less greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture industry. This, in theory, would lead to less focus on the agriculture industry, which in turn would end the narratives that call the rural citizens into action. One barrier to this solution stems from the attitudes toward “liberal elites” that can exist within rural American communities. The book “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker” found that rural citizens felt resentment towards the “liberal elites” of larger, urban areas within their states. Researchers and professors were among this group of “liberal elites’ ‘ thus a barrier could be overcoming this idea and finding farms that are open to partnering with researchers. This could be best mitigated by having a waterfall effect. Finding one or a few farms to participate in the study and having this study spell out positive outcomes could lead to a waterfall effect of more farmers wanting to be involved. Another way could be to provide financial incentives such as tax credits or payment from the studies themself to participate.
Another solution to gaining more rural support would be to gain the trust in climate change policy by having an agricultural task force that analyzes climate change policy and reports the impacts of the policy on the agricultural industry. This task force would potentially help rural citizens feel more at ease about politicians passing policy and give them the confidence to know their community is being considered. This task force would operate similarly to a state’s budgeting office and would make non-partisan assessments on how climate change policy would impact the agricultural industry. One barrier to this would be gaining the trust of rural citizens in the validity of this task force. Another challenge could stem from getting the funding necessary to fund a task force. The agriculture industry already receives billions of dollars in subsidies per year and the rural population in many states is much lower than urban so passing legislation to approve funding for the task force could prove difficult, especially if it comes in the form of raising taxes. One way to mitigate this is once the Farm Bill comes under renegotiation in 2023 is to accrue funding from the Farm Bill.
One solution that is currently employed is the use of subsidizing climate-friendly agriculture. For example, USDA operates the Conservation Reserve Program in which farmers are paid to take agricultural cropland out of production and convert them into vegetative cover. The overall goal of this program is to reduce land erosion and lessen the emission of greenhouse gasses by having less land in use. While in theory, this program sounds helpful, it is not heavily utilized as farms make more money by using their land for agricultural uses rather than enrolling in the CRP program. Another program being implemented is the practice of allowing farmers to sell their carbon credits to private companies. The idea behind this program is to give farmers an opportunity to seek more financial stability by selling their credits and by farmers having fewer carbon credits. This will push them to pursue more sustainable farming practices. The biggest point of contention for these programs is finding the funding for an industry that is already heavily subsidized. The agricultural industry gets 20 billion in subsidies every year. These subsidies are decided by the Farm Bill which is negotiated every 5 years. So for these programs to get funding from the main source of agricultural subsidies, it would take until 2023 to enter the bill.
Inversely, the idea of taxing farmers for convention farming practices to push them towards more sustainable practices is not the solution. This method could make the level of support even lower among rural citizens. This could build the existing resentment of climate policy, whereas partnerships with universities would be more successful by building trust in climate science and scientists.
Bibliography
“Challenges Facing USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program.” USDA ERS – Challenges Facing USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program, 2020. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2010/june/challenges-facing-usda-s-conservation-reserve -program/.
Diamond, Emily P, Robert Bonnie, and Elizabeth Rowe. “Rural Attitudes on Climate Change – Duke University.” Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions , 2020. https://nicholasinstitute.duke.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Rural-Attitudes-on-Climate-Cha nge-Midwest_1.pdf.
Edwards, Chris. “Agricultural Subsidies.” Downsizinggovernment.org, 2018. https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/subsidies.
Hayes, Tara, and Katerina Kerska. “Primer: Agriculture Subsidies and Their Influence on the Composition of U.S. Food Supply and Consumption.” AAF, November 3, 2021. https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/primer-agriculture-subsidies-and-their-influence on-the-composition-of-u-s-food-supply-and-consumption/#:~:text=These%20programs%20are% 20included%20in,year%20over%20the%20past%20decade.
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Savat, Sara. “The Divide between Us: Urban-Rural Political Differences Rooted in Geography – the Source – Washington University in St. Louis.” The Source, November 20, 2020. https://source.wustl.edu/2020/02/the-divide-between-us-urban-rural-political-differences-rooted-i n-geography/.