The Role of Social Networks and Social Capital in Farmers’ Climate Change Adaptation
By Zohreh Moghfeli, PhD student, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, The Open University. Climate change is leading to more extreme and unpredictable weather events, significantly impacting agriculture and farming communities worldwide. In developing countries, a farmers’ social network plays a crucial role in providing access to information, agricultural knowledge, and other essential resources, which enhances their ability to cope with the increasing number of climate-related shocks and challenges. Social networks consist of individuals, groups, and organizations connected through various social relationships, such as family ties, friendships, partnerships, or other forms of collaboration. These networks are a vital source of social capital, influencing how societies and communities act, behave, and make decisions. Interactions within informal networks (family, friends, colleagues) and formal networks (agricultural institutions and organizations) are key sources of influence and often the only source of support to farmers, helping them recover from environmental, social, and economic impacts.
Agriculture, as one of the world’s oldest and most essential industries, supports rural economies and drives global development. It provides livelihoods for millions of family farms, responsible for producing most of the world’s food supply. Globally, the sector contributes about 4% to the economy, and in some developing countries, it can account for up to 25% of GDP. Agriculture is crucial for reducing poverty, ensuring food security, increasing exports, and creating jobs, particularly in developing nations where it raises incomes and improves living standards, promoting overall socio-economic development. Beyond food production, agriculture fuels economic progress by supplying affordable labour, generating financial resources, and providing raw materials for other industries. As global populations grow and food security becomes an increasingly pressing concern, the sector’s significance continues to rise, underscoring its critical role in promoting sustainable development worldwide.
This vital sector is highly dependent on climate and its changes. By the mid-21st century, global food security is expected to be significantly impacted by climate change, with estimates suggesting that by 2030, around 130 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty as a result. This will likely contribute to greater social instability and inequality. Climate change is altering rainfall patterns, causing more intense and frequent droughts and floods. These shifts affect water availability and water quality, disrupting livelihoods and infrastructure in both urban and rural areas, particularly in agriculture and transportation. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the impacts of climate change are widespread, leading to deforestation, land and water degradation, biodiversity loss, and changes in ecosystem functions. These environmental changes are accompanied by increased disease, migration, and displacement, worsening public health and well-being. In the agriculture sector, rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and extreme weather events are reducing soil quality, crop yields and productivity. This decline leads to lower food availability, higher prices, and growing threats to food security. As a result, millions of people face poorer nutrition, reduced livelihoods, and diminished dietary diversity, further threatening global well-being.
Approximately 3.3 billion people live in countries highly vulnerable to climate change. The situation becomes even more complicated when combined with poverty, health issues, migration, high debt, low education, high dependency on natural resource-based livelihoods, weak state institutions, lack of governance capacities and infrastructure, inequality, insecurity, and conflicts. Therefore, farmers need to improve their resilience and ability to respond effectively to these issues. This could be achieved by implementing new technologies in different parts of farming and production processes, choosing diversified and climate-tolerant crops, and seeking advice and information from peer farmers and agricultural institutions through trusted social networks.
The role of a farmers social network becomes crucial in this context. Through social interactions and links, farmers can improve their social capital, which is essential for dealing with shocks and changes, especially climate-related ones. Social capital, as the resource resulting from social structures, uses social interactions to facilitate the transfer of resources among people. These interactions can increase cooperative behaviour and resource sharing when vulnerability is heightened by shocks and tensions. In other words, social networks and network structures can form the basis for social capital, increasing the ability to adapt. Thus, having dense, suitable, and organized interactions and links with farmers and other stakeholders inside and outside their groups and villages is among one of the main strategies through which farmers can reduce their vulnerability to greatest affect.
To improve their resilience and adaptation, farmers should have access to agricultural knowledge, which is embedded in their experience, experiments, and practices, evolves with changes in environmental conditions, and affects their risk awareness and potential responses to climate change and their willingness to apply adaptation strategies. In this regard, social learning and social interaction are effective for linking science, practice, and policy to tackle the impacts of climate change. These social networks in farming communities can facilitate the flow of important agricultural information, provide capacities for wider-scale links, develop local agro-food systems, and increase social cohesion between various groups.
Despite the significance of social networks in helping farmers and farming societies deal with the impacts of climate change, these networks have not been sufficiently understood, especially in developing countries facing various social, economic, political, environmental, and climatic issues. Research that develops better insight and understanding of the value of these networks can assist farmers in dealing better with these issues into the future. This also could give policymakers a better understanding of the capacities of these networks to introduce and accept new ideas, technologies, and practices that could support farmers in dealing with climate change impacts. Leader farmers in these societies, who play an influential role in transferring knowledge and information among their peers, can facilitate better interactions in the network, leading to improved social capital at different levels and a better ability of farmers to deal with changes.
Given the above, Zohreh Moghefeli is conducting research on the social network of pistachio farmers in central Iran. This area is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions of the country, where farmers are dealing with the impacts of climate change, such as lack of rainfall and water shortages. Cultivating pistachios is a significant component of agriculture in this area, with important economic, social, and cultural effects that encourage local farmers to produce more each year. In other words, cultivating pistachios has led to economic security, improved employment, social cooperation, and even a sense of belonging among local farmers. It has also helped reduce the differences between urban and rural population livelihoods and incomes, enhancing political and social stability in the area. However, pistachio farmers in this region face various challenges from the impacts of climate change. They must deal with water shortages, frost damage in spring, increased pests and tree diseases, and market fluctuations. These issues make it necessary for them to increase their knowledge to be more adaptable, which can be achieved by being more aware of climate change and its impacts, new and scientific ways of maintaining pistachio trees, using new technologies, especially in irrigating their gardens, and being more aware of market situations. The hypothesis is that this will be better achieved through increased social interactions and social capital among farmers. By having a social network that includes peer farmers and external sources of information and support, such as agricultural organizations, these farmers will be better able to adapt to various shocks from climate change. The study of these local farmers and their social networks will enable understanding of how social relationships can increase social capital and their resilience and ability to adapt to climatic changes and their impacts.
Zohreh Moghfeli, PhD student, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences and Global Studies, The Open University.
My research focuses on social network analysis (SNA) of farmer social networks and social capital, and their ability to support climate change resilience and adaptation. Currently, I am working on my PhD research on pistachio farmers social networks and climate change adaptation under the supervision of Prof. Shonil Bhagwat and Dr Arabella Fraser. Previously, I studied for my bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Tehran, Iran in human and rural geography with a focus on farming societies and their social networks. You can read more about my research from my publication in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management: Social capital and farmers’ leadership in Iranian rural communities: application of social network analysis: Journal of Environmental Planning and Management: Vol 66, No 5 (tandfonline.com).
