Analyzing farm households' perception and choice of adaptation strategies towards climate change impacts: a case study of vulnerable households in an emerging Asian region.
Poor agricultural communities are particularly more disruptive to changes in climate. In southeast Asian countries, Pakistan is extremely vulnerable to weather-related events including droughts and floods. This research study aims to determine the farmers' perception towards climatic risks, farmers' choice of adaptation strategies and factors influencing farmers' decision of adaptation measures. A face-to-face household survey was conducted to collect primary data of 378 farm households from three tehsils of district Charsadda-Khyber Pakhuntkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was utilized as an instrument to collect data from the targeted farmers in study areas (three tehsils of district Charsadda). A binary probit model approach was used to assess the major factors affecting farmers' decision towards adaptation measures. Results revealed that changing crop varieties, diversification of crops, changing crop calendar, and insurance of crops were the major adaptive measures exercised by farm households in their farms. Findings of the binary probit approach showed that age of the respondents, farm size, educational level, credit access, household size, extension services access and perception of increased floods, and reduction in precipitation had substantial effect on the farmers' adaptation strategies choice. Advanced agricultural practices in response to the climatic risks can thus have substantial effects and reduction in farmers' exposure to natural calamities. Study findings of our research can guide policy makers and concerned authorities and provide policy implications for future research studies.
Baloch ZA
,Tan Q
,Fahad S
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Do farmers' risk perception, adaptation strategies, and their determinants benefit towards climate change? Implications for agriculture sector of Punjab, Pakistan.
Due to global and regional climatic dynamics for a couple of decades, agricultural productivity, rural livelihood, and food security have been badly affected in Pakistan. This study was conducted in Punjab, Pakistan, to explore the farmers' understanding of the impacts of climate change, adaptation strategies, determinants, and benefits on agriculture using data from 1080 respondents. Perceived risks by the farmers in the rice-wheat cropping system and the cotton-wheat cropping system were weed infestation, seed rate augmented, low-quality seeds, infestation of crop diseases and pests, change of cropping pattern, increase of input use, decrease of cropping intensity and productivity, decreasing soil fertility, increasing irrigation frequency, and increase of harvesting time. To alleviate the adverse influences of climate change, the adaptation strategies used by farmers were management of crop and variety, soil and irrigation water, diversification of agriculture production systems and livelihood sources, management of fertilizer and farm operations time, spatial adaptation, access to risk reduction measures and financial assets, adoption of new technologies, institutional support, and indigenous knowledge. Moreover, the results of Binary Logistic Regression indicate that adaptation strategies are affected by different factors like age, education, household family size, off-farm income, remittances, credit access, information on climatic and natural hazards, information on weather forecasting, land acreage, the experience of growing crops and rearing of livestock, tenancy status, tube well ownership, livestock inventory, access to market information, agricultural extension services, and distance from agricultural input/output market. There is a significant difference between adapters and nonadapters. The risk management system may be created to protect crops against failures caused by extreme weather events. There is a need to develop crop varieties that are both high yielding and resistant to climate change. Moreover, cropping patterns should be revised to combat the effects of climate change. To enhance farmers' standard of living, it is necessary to provide adequate extension services and a more significant number of investment facilities. These measures will assist farmers in maintaining their standard of living and food security over the long term to adapt to the effects of climate change based on various cropping zones.
Usman M
,Ali A
,Bashir MK
,Radulescu M
,Mushtaq K
,Wudil AH
,Baig SA
,Akram R
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Livelihood diversification in managing catastrophic risks: evidence from flood-disaster regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan.
Pakistan's agricultural productivity is considered to be low despite several agriculture promotion policies. Such policies concentrate primarily on on-farm development and overlook rich prospects for off-farm diversification. Livelihood diversification of small-scale farmers plays a major role in reducing hunger and mitigating the adverse impacts of climate change. Therefore, this paper seeks to analyze livelihood diversification in managing catastrophic risks among rural farm households of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. We have interviewed a total of 600 farm households through a standardized questionnaire in two districts (Nowshera and Charsadda) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan that were badly affected by the 2010 flood. For empirical analysis, a logistic regression model was chosen to analyze the important attributes that are correlated to livelihood diversification of the rural households in flood-susceptible areas of Pakistan. The survey findings indicate that 50% of the total sample respondents adopted off-farm livelihood diversification strategies, while 40.5% of farm households adopted on-farm livelihood diversification strategies in managing catastrophic risks. The logistic regression model results show that attributes including socioeconomic and demographic, institutional, and risk perception significantly influenced households' choices of livelihood diversification. Also, the findings indicated a wide range of livelihood diversification constrained including climatic risks and uncertainties (23%), inadequate natural resources (17%), limited level of skills and training (15%), lack of institutional support (12%), lack of credit facilities (11%), poor infrastructure including markets and roads (16%), and lack of labor availability (4%). The study urges the need for robust climate change adaptation policies, in particular, by aiming at training initiatives, improving access to services, and enhancing institutional assistance, and better infrastructure. The livelihood of small-scale farmers could only improve if the Government pays due consideration and adopts the right policy initiatives that promote the diversification of livelihoods as part of the creation of national jobs to save many lives and improve livelihoods.
Shah AA
,Gong Z
,Khan NA
,Khan I
,Ali M
,Naqvi SAA
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Discriminated perceptions of climatic impacts on coastal farm management practices.
Agriculture is responsive to weather and climate variability. In addition to the climatic stressors, coastal agriculture is influenced by non-climatic factors. Therefore, understanding farmers' perception of the causes of their changes in farm management plays a key role in motivating them to adopt agricultural adaptations. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in coastal farm management in Bangladesh over the last decade compared to the previous one. We explored whether the causes of those changes were climatic or non-climatic as perceived by the farmers and the factors that shaped their perceptions. We interviewed 381 farmers sampled from ten subdistricts along the coast of Bangladesh. Descriptive statistics showed that the farmers had changed on average 10 to 11 farm management practices. Though the average value was 67%, a higher number of farmers in the western coastal zone mentioned that climate change had impacts on their farm management. Adoption of rice crop-related adaptations was greater than livestock, fisheries or general agricultural practices. According to the discriminant function analysis, discriminative variables were perception of climatic impacts on farm productivity, climate change awareness, involvement with non-farm jobs, age, education, organizational affiliation, number of changed farm practices, and meteorologically consistent perception of rainfall and temperature. Lessons learned from this research are that the farmers should better understand the link between climate change and farm management practices while motivating them to implement adaptation strategies. This could be achieved by improving farmers' climate change awareness, perceptions of changes in climatic parameters and involvement with farm-related associations.
Hasan MK
,Kumar L
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