Conceptualizing Coproduced Climate Research as Care: Practical Lessons Learned With Women Farmland-Owners in the Central Midwest United States

Abstract

This article's team of interdisciplinary researchers and conservation educator-practitioners learned with, and from, a group of women farmland-owners regarding how to conceptualize coproduced climate research by putting “care” at the center—care for the soil, for relationships, for data. We outline the creation and evolution of a storytelling-based conservation program that allowed our diverse group to discover how the language of care could integrate climate analysis, conservation, and relationship-building to foster tangible solutions. As a result of the project, the women landowners took actions that supported social-environmental resilience—from planting cover crops to fostering watershed/neighborhood relationships. Our diverse group of women landowners and researchers had very different experiences with conservation and often very different views on climate change itself, but, through storytelling and the language of care, we not only coproduced knowledge but also created relationships and action. This article outlines specific practices for how to inflect a coproduced process for climate resilience with practices that promote care and yield action projects.