Flexibility to Cope: Producers Perceptions of Uncertainty and Adaptive Strategies to Maintain Resilience.

The beef cattle industry is significantly impacted by environmental variability which is increasing in the Great Plains. Producers will have to be more flexible to maintain resiliency in the face of uncertainty. The majority of producers in a 2016 survey of beef cattle industry professionals in the Southern Great Plains (Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) expressed support for efforts to adapt to climate variability regardless of their causal beliefs about climate change. In-depth interviews with cattle producers in the SGP indicated producers are investigating and implementing options that give them greater flexibility in response to uncertainty in future conditions such as grazing alternative forages and diversifying crop systems. Given favorable attitudes towards adaptation efforts, focusing on a message of adapting to climate variability may be a way to engage those who would otherwise be disinclined to participate in climate change adaptation programming and still achieve increased resilience to projected climate change impacts.