Farmer's Perceptions and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change, Its Determinants and Impacts in Ethiopia: Evidence from Qwara District

Abstract

This study presents analysis of farmer’s perceptions and adaptation strategies to climate change, its determinants and impacts in Qwara district. The study aims to assess the causes, indicators and determinants of climate change based on smallholder farmers’ perception. Systematic random sampling method was used to select 100 sample households. Structured and semi-structured questionnaires were distributed for these sample households for interview. The analysis of data was done by using a descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis. This study revealed that 90% of the respondents perceived that there is a change in climate parameters overtime. Temperature and rainfall variation are the dominant climatic variables in the study area. The most commonly climate change indicators observed by smallholder farmers were high temperature (90%), high rainfall (87%), and high wind (65%). 92% of the respondents perceived that, the agricultural production dramatically decreased due to excess rainfall at harvesting time and less rainfall at its growing time. The results of this study also showed that the significant deterministic factors for implementing the adaptation strategies are lack of information, poverty, low level of technology, shortage of input labor, poor soils, lack of adequate water and shortage of land for cultivation. Therefore, this study suggested that introducing and integrating the various adaptation techniques considering the determinants can enable smallholder farmers to design best climate change adaptation strategies.