Factors Influencing Tomato Farmers’ Perception of Climate Variability: Evidence from the Offinso North District, Ghana

Abstract

This paper sought to analyse tomato farmers’ perceptions of climate variability in the Offinso North District, Ghana. A cross-section of 378 tomato farmers were interviewed to examine what they perceive climate variability to be and the factors that influence their perception of climatic variation  (changes in temperature, changes in rainfall pattern and changes in the intensity of solar radiation)  using binary logistic regression model. The study found that respondents had observed temperature rise (90.2%); decrease in rainfall (87.3%); prolonged drought (88.1%); increase in solar radiation (74.6%) and an unpredictable rainfall pattern (73.5%). The perceptions of the farmers were consistent with the meteorological time series data in the area of temperature rise, but while farmers perceived a reduction in rainfall, the meteorological data rather showed an increasing rainfall variability trend. The binary logistic regression results indicate that sex (P = 0.05), age (P = 0.05), formal education (P = 0.05), access to extension service (P = 0.05) and access to climate information (P = 0.05) are factors that significantly influence farmers perception of climate variability. The study concludes that sex, age, formal education, access to extension service and access to climate information are major determinants that influence farmers’ perception of climate variability. Policies tailored at enhancing the adaptive capacity of farmers through access to formal and non-formal education should be provided to enable tomato farmers to produce more tomatoes to increase food production in the study area and Ghana in general.