Farmers’ Knowledge of Adaptation Strategies to Mitigate Climate Change and Factors Influencing Their Adoption

Abstract

Climate change has emerged as a global threat negatively affecting the productivity and production efficiency of agriculture systems thereby endangering food security and livelihoods of rural communities in most of the developing countries like India. Climate change and extreme climatic events have caused India’s agriculture production to decline and exacerbated food insecurity during the last few decades. Consequently, Indian farmers have developed indigenous practices to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture. This study aims at studying farmers’ knowledge of adaptation strategies, identifying the adoption of adaptation strategies and find out various factors influencing farmers’ adoption of adaptation strategies to cope up with climate change. The present study draws upon data collected through personal interviews with 180 farmers in one district of North-Western Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. The results showed that farmers knowledge of adaptation strategies was found to be medium; most common adaptation strategies employed were – change in sowing time/ date, crop diversification, inter/ mixed cropping, use of drought and heat resistant crop varieties, and short duration and early maturing crop varieties. Further, Using Karl Pearson Correlation, the results indicated that age, farming experience, landholding, annual income, information seeking behavior, scientific orientation, credit and subsidy orientation, decision making ability, extension contact were likely to affect their knowledge of adaptation strategies to cope up with climate change. The results of the present study will provide policy makers with new insights for the government and encourage agricultural extension services providers to promote location specific adoption of coping strategies so as to tackle the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture.