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

and climate information, and effective communication strategies could be a powerful catalyst for change. The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable to a changing climate and its effect can be seen from a local (disruption of planting schedules) to a global scale (food security). We found that scientists working in the agroclimate field are deliberate about their communication and are knowledgeable about their targeted stakeholders. This suggests methods for enhancing communication should be focused on other areas. Remaining challenges relate to already determined barriers to climate change communication including complexity [42, 43], uncer- tainty [62, 66, 67], and long-term climate change effects [33]. Our results show that though some challenges–stakeholder knowledge, timescale, and scientific uncertainty–are present in all of the stakeholder groups, others like developing a collective strategy or fear of regulation are very specific to one or two stakeholder groups. Specific to producers, we found scientists described challenges to communicating climate change issues as related to the fundamental job of farming/ranching. That is, producers are focused upon immediate decision-making and practices that allow them to manage their farms without disruption and ensure their liveli- hoods without incorporating new risks. These results correspond to other research which has found communicating short-term fixes to climate change related weather event impacts are preferred over pushing for long-term adaptive management strategies [19, 89]. These results

also relate to the discussion above–changing farm practices due to perceived uncertainty in cli- mate change risk is untenable [71]. Scientists in our study named stakeholder knowledge as a challenge for all stakeholder groups and suggested that education is the key to helping these stakeholder groups better understand climate science. This exemplifies how some scientists or messengers continue to use the knowledge deficit model to inform their communication methods and perspectives of public stakeholder groups [29], which may not be productive for moving agricultural stake- holders towards a consensus about the existence and causes of climate change. Although public understanding of science can play a role in acceptance of controversial types of science [97] and there are proven methods to enhance stakeholder knowledge of science (e.g., participatory adaptive management projects [98], using a community-based approach to managing science problems [99]), moving away from the knowledge deficit model of science communication could greatly enhance climate change communications between scientists and agricultural stakeholders. Encouraging climate scientists to attend communication trainings and practice communication methods grounded in social science research [29] could help climate scientists move away from using the knowledge deficit model to inform their communications with agricultural stakeholders. Co-production of knowledge could be another way of working toward adaptive management solutions, whereby producers, scientists, and agricultural advi-

sors work on adaptive management strategies together to increase farm resilience and adapt to climate change [100–103]. Some of the difficulties of addressing climate change timescales with agricultural stakehold- ers could be dealt with via role-play simulations or serious games. In the past decade, many researchers have found role-play simulations and serious games can increase participant knowledge about climate change [104–107]. Addressing uncertainty in climate science is diffi- cult, as there is the potential for stakeholders to misinterpret the usage of this word [66]. Some researchers suggest communicating transparently about what uncertainty means in the context of climate science, i.e., discussing the likelihoods of potential scenarios, the range of potential impacts, and the inherent uncertainty associated with all science can aid in preventing misin- terpretations of uncertainty in the context of climate science [108]. Others suggest that in addi- tion to this transparency, more cumbersome efforts of understanding stakeholders’ relevant decisions and how uncertainties in science can affect these decisions can aid in effective 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 15 / 22

communication of uncertainty [63]. In addition to transparent communication, some research has shown simulations may be important tools in effective communication of uncertainty to non-science audiences [109]. Supporting information S1 File. NIFA climate portfolio climate professional survey. (DOCX) S1 Fig. Scientist/professional type. Survey question was “please specify the type of scientist/ professional you are (check all that apply):” Inset table indicates the frequency of respondents to select �1 value. (DOCX) S2 Fig. Stakeholders currently or previously worked with. Survey question was “please select the following stakeholders that you currently or previously worked with (check all that apply).” Inset table indicates the frequency of respondents to select �1 value. (DOCX) S1 Table. Scientist survey response rate. (DOCX) S2 Table. Scientists’ agreement with climate statements and their perspective on how stakeholders would respond. (DOCX) S3 Table. Scientists’ agreement with climate statements compared to producers and crop advisors’ agreement (Scientist perspectives 2017, Producer and Crop Advisor perspectives 20161). (DOCX) S4 Table. Climate scientists’ perspective of the stakeholder compared to producers’ and crop advisors’ agreement on climate statements (Scientist perspectives 2017, Producer and Crop Advisor perspectives 20161). (DOCX) S5 Table. Scientists’ likelihood of using terminology by stakeholder group sorted by overall decreasing likelihood ranking (mean). (DOCX) S6 Table. Communication challenges codes and examples (n = 227). (DOCX) Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the project’s advisory committee and Dr. Jerry Hatfield for their review of the survey. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Jackie M. Getson, Anders E. Sjo¨strand, Linda S. Prokopy. Data curation: Jackie M. Getson. Formal analysis: Jackie M. Getson, Sarah P. Church, Junyu Lu. 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 16 / 22

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