Abstract

Agriculture is responsible for the bulk of Ireland’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
However, the potential to mitigate some of these emissions through the adoption
of more efficient farm management practices may be hampered by farmers’
awareness and attitude towards climate change and agriculture’s role in
contributing to GHG emissions. This paper presents results from a survey of 746
Irish farmers in 2014, with a view to understanding farmers’ awareness of, and
attitudes to, climate change and GHG emissions. Survey results show that there was
a general uncertainty towards a number of questions related to agricultural GHG
emissions, e.g. if tilling of land causes GHG emissions, and that farmers were
reluctant to take action to reduce GHG emissions on their farm. To further explore
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 show that farmers’ awareness of humaninduced
global climate change was positively related to the tool’s adoption.