Towards taking farmers seriously: Contributions of farmer knowledge to food systems adaptation to climate change

The effects of climate change on land-based food systems are, and will continue to be, devastating. To preserve lives and livelihoods, policy in the food-climate nexus must help to build resilience and adapt successfully to these changes. Yet farmers, whose tacit knowledge makes them experts in food systems adaptation and whose livelihoods are directly affected by shifts in policy, are conspicuously absent from planning discussions. This is the case in three Eastern Canadian Maritime provinces—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—where provincial adaptation planning does not consider climate change a threat to food systems.
This thesis explores the potential and current contributions of farmers’ knowledge to adaptation of regional and global food systems. From an empirical perspective, I explain how farmer knowledge has been sidelined in research and policy discussions and demonstrate how farmer-led collective action successfully builds adaptive capacity to climate change. I also contribute to ongoing theoretical discussions by deconstructing the meaning of “resilience” in the context of the implementation of the term in policy in the food-climate nexus.
Its original contributions to research come in three published papers which primarily focus on small-scale vegetable producers in the Maritimes region as a case study of how farmers adapt markets and farms without policy support. Fieldwork insights draw from two sets of semi-structured interviews, conducted and analyzed through grounded theory methodology.
First, I present a systematic literature review of farmer perceptions of climate change in the academic literature. I argue that while the literature certainly recognizes farmers' participation in land management as an essential component of successful adaptation, their knowledge is largely perceived as provisional and open for verification by scientists, rather than trustworthy.
Then, I consider collective action in the food system and its implications for endogenous, grass-roots climate adaptation strategies. Building on interviews conducted in the Maritimes over 2017-2018, the paper suggests that collective action substantively contributes to adaptation and should be supported by adaptation policy, rather than overturned by top-down policies which dictate changes and adaptations.
Finally, I examine disjointed definitions of the term “resilience” between farmer participants and Canadian climate policy, pointing to the problematic nature of boundary objects in climate and food policy. Building on the notion that resilience is not a politically neutral term, the paper uses the example of studies from Canadian government committees to point out how a loose definition of resilience can entrench the status quo rather than enable necessary adaptations.
The thesis argues that farmer knowledge on successful adaptation is nowhere near as present in adaptation planning processes as the literature suggests it is, or ought to be. It shows that farmers can and do capably generate successful adaptations for entire food systems through collective action with other food system actors. The thesis also warns that while these adaptations require external support, the institutional mechanisms currently in place tend to reinforce the status quo rather than communicate felt impacts or enable transformative change in food systems.

Keywords: climate change
resilience
agriculture
farmer knowledge
adaptation
canada
food systems
collective action
Advisor: Sherren, K
Thornton, T