Understanding scientists’ communication challenges at the intersection of climate and agriculture

Scientists are deliberate with their choice of language when talking to different stakeholder groups. Different terminology use by term/phrase and target audience indicates a conscious decision to frame messages differently depending on target (Fig 2). Following best practices, scientists are making a deliberate effort to avoid jargon and consider the audience they are addressing to communicate more effectively; they specifically addressed terminology choice as a fundamental challenge to communicating climate change issues to most stakeholder groups. This strategy is consistent with others’ recommendations [33, 57, 61, 62, 67]. For example, phrases like “extreme weather” and “climate change” are more likely to be used than “global warming.” Additionally, “positive” and “negative” are not commonly used. Producers are a stakeholder group that scientists appear to be more cautious overall with terminology use, with seven of the eight significant terms/phrases less likely to be used with producers. This is consistent with previous research that found producers are generally considered to be a politi- cally conservative group [80], and it is recommended to avoid controversial terms and issues (like climate change) with conservative audiences [8, 81–83]. Indeed, specific to communicat- ing climate adaptive farm management strategies, some researchers recommend using terms like extreme weather and resilience rather than climate change risk [84, 85]. Morton, Roesch-McNally, and Wilke [71] found that 89.5% of producers in the Midwest

could not justify changing their farm practices because they felt there was too much uncer- tainty about the impacts of climate change. Communicating about scientific uncertainty was identified as a common challenge with all stakeholder groups. Overall, however, farm manage- ment is a complicated endeavor, with a multitude of motivations and barriers that influence producers’ decision-making [86, 87]. Adding on concepts of climate change risk just adds to this complexity, and perhaps this is why others have recommended steering away from climate change as a good communication strategy. However, others have noted that ignoring realities of climate change risk by avoiding discussions specific to climate change may result in less urgency toward long-term strategies to increase agricultural resilience [19, 88, 89]. All of these challenges are in addition to the eroding of trust in science [51, 90, 91], which has been exacer- bated by poor communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic [92], and the reality of how cultural and social norms relate to producers’ values that influence belief in climate sci- ence and their subsequent actions [53]. Although trust in science is eroding generally among both Democrats and Republicans in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is more dramatically eroding among Republicans [91]. This research has implications for producers’ trust in scien- tists, as producers across the U.S. tend to hold more conservative views [61]. Producers in the Midwestern U.S. seek information from specific sources; namely family

members and agricultural advisors [93]. Distinct from scientists, agricultural advisors are the information intermediaries providing direct guidance to farmers on day-to-day farming deci- sion-making by assessing farmers’ needs [68, 84, 94, 95]. Moreover, seeking and using infor- mation is positively related to producers adopting soil and water conservation practices [86] and trust in information sources is a motivation for conservation adoption [87]. These studies suggest the messenger, not only the message, is an important consideration for science com- munication. While Church et al. [19] found conservation and extension advisors were more likely to recommend adaptive management practices to their producers than financial and crop advisors, overall there is little evidence that agricultural advisors communicate agricul- tural climate change risk to their producers [19, 88]. There is a call for agricultural advisors and scientists (e.g., climatologists) to work together to build a shared understanding of agricul- tural climate change risk that can then be communicated to producers [19, 94, 96]. Our results suggest some promise in such a collaboration: scientists understand how to communicate cli- mate risk with various stakeholders, as do agricultural advisors. Combining on-farm weather PLOS ONE Understanding scientists’ communication challenges at the intersection of climate and agriculture PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269927 August 2, 2022 14 / 22