Examining Irish farmers’ awareness of climate change and the factors affecting the adoption of an advisory tool for the reduction of GHG emissions

Livestock is a very significant sector in Irish agriculture and it could possibly mitigate a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. However, farmers’ awareness and acceptance towards climate change might be a significant barrier to voluntary adoption of best practice techniques. This paper presents results from a supplementary survey of 747 Irish farmers conducted as part of the National Farm Survey (NFS) in 2014, with a view to understanding farmers’ awareness of and attitudes to climate change and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Survey results showed that there was a general uncertainty towards a number of agricultural GHG emissions related questions and that farmers’ attitude towards GHG emissions reduction was not very positive. In order to explore further farmers’ attitudes towards climate change, a multinomial logit model was used to examine the socio-economic factors that affect farmers’ willingness to adopt an advisory tool that would show the potential reduction in GHG emissions from the adoption of new technologies. Results showed that investment in machinery, awareness, region, environmental subsidies, use of social networking, agri-training encouraged adoption while off-farm income was negatively related to adoption.