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The study of attitudes to climate change among farmers, commissioned by the Agriculture Department, found only 27 per cent of those surveyed believed human activity was causing climate change, compared with 58 per cent of urban dwellers.
As well, primary producers are "very resistant to carbon trading". "It fills them with dread, and there were strong negative reactions towards it," the report says.
Handed to the department late last year, the report warns that terminology that fails to take into account the attitude of primary producers towards human-induced climate change risks failure. The term "climate change" sets up negative reactions among primary producers for a number of reasons, from scepticism through to perceptions that they are being held solely responsible for causing climate change, it says.
"Preferred terms such as 'climate challenges', 'prolonged drought' and 'risk management' are accepted, better understood and more likely to motivate change."
The report, prepared by Sydney-based marketer Instinct and Reason, was aimed at developing a communication strategy as the government seeks to sell its climate change message. It says many primary producers feel climate change and mitigation efforts are no more important compared with other significant challenges such as low prices, increasing costs, labour shortages and declining profitability.
"Many primary producers expressed the view that human-induced climate change is yet to be proven and dismiss the idea that it is behind the climatic situations they currently face. Instead, they prefer to see it as yet another period of drought or change in conditions that will eventually pass."
Nationals leader Warren Truss seized on the report. "It is crystal clear that farmers have seen through Labor's policies on climate change and don't want a carbon tax. Simply dressing up the term 'climate change' as something else in an attempt to snow farmers is nothing but spin and won't fool anyone," he said.
However, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister, Joe Ludwig, who is also the federal minister responsible for dealing with the Queensland floods, said the government accepted the science of climate change and believed in the importance of tackling it.
"We're talking to all industries and communities about the issue of climate change, including the farming sector," Senator Ludwig said.
It's getting hard to keep up, maybe we should let them escape and run where the brave do not go? Such as their own graves?