Covering Climate Change: How Three American Agricultural Magazines Covered Climate Change Over 20 Years

Abstract

Climate change will have an increasing impact on agriculture through both on-farm weather events and climate-related initiatives. However, many farmers, while perceiving the climate as changing, do not believe in climate change’s anthropogenic (i.e., human-caused) nature which could prevent farmer buy-in for climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Because agricultural magazines have been established as a widely utilized source of information for farmers and media coverage has been shown to relate to perceptions through the agenda setting process, this study investigated the nature of the coverage of climate change articles from three agricultural magazines from 2000-2020 (N = 271). Through a quantitative content analysis, we determined the articles’ frames, sources, proposed economic impact of climate change, recommended action or proposed solution, determined cause of climate change, and logic (convinced or skeptical). This analysis revealed the dominant frame of the articles were scientific certainty, followed by political, conflict, and scientific uncertainty. The most frequently used sources were university scientists/Extension, followed by government officials and government research organizations. Articles were most likely to not mention the cause or economic impact of climate change. Articles tended to mention carbon sequestration more than other potential behaviors. The articles mostly portrayed a convinced logic about climate change. This study serves as a cultural artifact of the nature of climate change coverage in agricultural magazines and contributes to the burgeoning research efforts to best communicate this contentious topic to agriculturalists and encourage adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices.