Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0008-7061-4661

Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP)

Reader 1

William Ascher

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©2026 Katherine M Galindo

Abstract

Climate change is reshaping agriculture across the Mountain West faster than the institutions designed to support it can respond. Declining snowpack, earlier runoff, prolonged drought, more severe wildfires, and other changes are destabilizing the ecological foundations of crop cultivation, ranching, and forestry. This thesis argues that the burden of this shift is not distributed evenly: smallholders face the highest climate exposure and the least institutional support. Drawing on recent research, policy evaluations, data analysis, and literature, the thesis shows how current programs and policies are misaligned with both the pace of climate change and the realities of smallholder operations. Because smallholders are of deep importance to this region, the thesis develops a set of reforms organized around administrative simplification, risk management, program redesign, and collaborative governance arrangements. Further investment in the Cooperative Extension System is likely one of the most immediately achievable and politically durable of these, because extension agents constitute the relationship infrastructure through which every other reform becomes accessible to the producers who need it most.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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