Adaptation Practices Among Arable Crop Farmers Against Perceived Effects of Climate Change in Rural Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

The way farmers perceived their environment dictates how they practice agriculture and by extension, type of adaptation measure to undertake in mitigating the effects of climate change on their crops. Therefore, the study examined the adaptation practices being employed by farmers to mitigate the perceived effects of climate change on selected arable crops in Rural Southwestern Nigeria. The specific objectives were to: identify sources of agricultural information; determine awareness of climate change by arable crop farmers; determine the perceived effects of climate parameters on selected arable crops; and identify adaptation measures employed to mitigate the perceived effects of climate change on arable crops in the study area. The only hypothesis was that there was no significant relationship between adaptation measures employed by farmers and perceived effects of climate change on selected arable crops. Multistage sampling technique was used in selecting 350 arable crop farmers. The results revealed that 97.4% of the respondents were aware that climate was changing and that arable crops were almost uniformly affected unfavourably by rainfall while 98.8% never insured their farms against climate change. The odd ratio of logistic regression revealed that planting different crops (7.23); employing tillage methods such as ridging, terracing, use of compost (2.74); use of mulching (0.42) and farming combined with non-farming activities (2.51) were significantly related to perceived effects of climate change on selected arable crops, all at p ? 0.05 level. It was recommended that farmers should adopt planting of their arable crops sequentially. Extension services must be invigorated to persuade farmers to use early maturing and drought resistance planting materials.