Farmer’s Perception and Efficacy of Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in North Eastern Transition Zone of Karnataka State in India

Abstract

A primary survey during the year 2021-22 was carried out among the 240 farmers of Bidar and Gulbarga districts of North Eastern Transition Zone in Karnataka to study the farmer’s perception on climate change for the period 1979 to 2019 and validate their opinions with the change in the meteorological indicators. About 74 percent of farmers expressed that there is a decline in crop yield while 83 percent of farmers opined that is a shift of employment from farm to non-farm activities during the period of forty years. Farmers practice various farm adaptation strategies activities to overcome the effect of climate change. Through Garatte ranking, it is revealed that most of the farmers prefer to practice alteration of sowing dates of crop (rank 1) as adaptation strategy followed by using of drought tolerant varieties (rank 2) and mixed cropping (rank3). Binary Logit analysis was used to identify the socio- economic attributes of households influencing the adoption of adaptation strategy to climate change. The results showed that, the variables like farm size, access to institutional credit, live stock ownership and climate information are the factors which positively shows significant influence on adoption. Economic incentives play an important role in the adoption of modern technologies. Access to institutional credit will support the farmers financially in adopting water conservation techniques like farm ponds, micro irrigation products.