Perception Driven From Farmers’ Socio-economic Characteristics Towards Tackling Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is part of us and we are unlikely to avoid its impact. Impacts of climate change are severely felt within the agricultural sector, the division that strives to ensure food and nutrition security and contribute towards sustainable development in many of the developing countries. The only way farmers can survive in the face of climate change is through adaptation, a phenomenon that needs collaborative efforts. One of the critical driving factors of climate change adaptation is farmers’ perception towards tackling it, the focus of this paper. The main objective of this paper was to assess farmers’ perception towards tackling climate change. The population of the study was emerging farmers drawn from five districts of the Limpopo province, South Africa. The study used a two-stage cluster sampling technique to select a sample size of 206 emerging farmers. The dependent variable of the study was farmers’ perception about tackling climate change while the explanatory variables consisted of their socio-economic characteristics such as age, gender, farming experience and level of education. Discriminant Analysis was used to draw comparison between groups of farmers who perceived that climate change can be tackled and those who believed it cannot be. The results showed that socio-economic characteristics such as formal education, agricultural education, age group, farming experience and off-farm occupation significantly contributed towards farmers’ perception regarding tackling of climate change. Therefore, the study recommended that stakeholders should facilitate linkage of farmers with varied sources of support.

Determinants of climate change adaptation strategies in South India: Empirical evidence

“…This implies that the farmers who enjoy better access to climate change information (i.e., seasonal or mid-term forecasting) made betterinformed adaptation decisions. These findings were similar to the findings from various studies (Belay et al, 2017;Halagundegowda et al, 2017;Adeagbo et al, 2021;Tshikororo et al, 2021). As expected by the researchers, education and livestock rearing had a positive association across all climate change adaptation strategies.…”

“…This multivariate statistical technique was employed (Duong et al, 2017;Tshikororo et al, 2021) to classify the farmers into two (or more) mutually exclusive and exhaustive groups based on a set of independent variables, that is, the discriminant model was used to distinguish between two categories of farmers: (i) willing to tackle climate change and (ii) non-willing to tackle climate change coded as 1 and 0, respectively. These two possible categories were defined by several factors, which simultaneously influence the farmers' willingness to tackle climate change.…”

“…Before this, it is essential to analyze their perceptions about CCAS and determinants of the same for their effective implementation. The past studies, conducted in South Africa (Tshikororo et al, 2021), Ghana (Mwinkom et al, 2021), Ethiopia (Belay et al, 2017), Uganda (Nabikilo et al, 2012), andFiji (Asafu-Adjaye, 2008), highlighted that farmers changed their cultivation practices as adaptation strategies in various ways, including change in crop calendar, crop varieties, farm machinery for cultivation practices, crop diversification, integrating crops with livestock (farming systems approach), and soil and water conservation practices. Even strategies such as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)-an innovative method of rice cultivation and microirrigation, were adopted by the farmers to combat water scarcity conditions.…”

“…Even strategies such as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI)-an innovative method of rice cultivation and microirrigation, were adopted by the farmers to combat water scarcity conditions. They also implemented strategies for coping with declining soil productivity by increasing organic manure application, compost making and application, crop rotation, and crop residue retention (Belay et al, 2017;Tshikororo et al, 2021). In India, the government started promoting the formation of Farmer Producer Organizations when a single farmer could not afford adaptation strategies (Singh et al, 2019).…”