This science society interface is most often cast in reference to ‘policymakers’, but should also apply directly to farmers [36]. The goal of this paper has been to set modelling approaches in contrast to analytical approaches that put farmers’ practices and adaptive capacities at the center of developing climate change adaptation processes. Each has strengths and weaknesses and neither is sufficient in addressing adaptation to long-terms climate change. The emergent challenge is how to most effectively integrate the strengths of farmer centered approaches with the power of science-driven modelling approaches so that they synergize in ways that not only produce adaptive technologies, but also contribute to farmers’ own adaptive capacities. One potential way of building this synergy comes through doing techno graphic research [see 37, in this issue] on farmers’ and scientists’ practices of adaptation. Bringing these often disparate, but related, practices into one frame of analysis would enable the comparison and analysis of overlaps, disjuncture and interfaces between the two approaches. Such analyses would provide empirical insights useful in creating this important synergy.