Jeevan LAMİCHHANE, Durga Bahadur RANABHAT, Ankit KOİRALA, Dipesh SHRESTHA

Determinants of Farmers Adaptation to Climate Change. A Case from Nawalparasi District of Nepal

A field survey was conducted to study the factor that determines farmers' decisions to adapt to climate change in Deurali and Agyouli V.D.Cs of Nawalparasi District. Altogether 180 household, 90 from each V.D.C were selected randomly for the study. A logit regression model was employed in the study. However, in order to measure the magnitude of the impact of the explanatory variables on the decision of the farmer to adapt to climate change marginal effects were computed. The study uses a binary dependent variable taking the value 1 if the farmer adapted to climate change and 0 otherwise. A farmer is considered to have adapted to climate change if he/she has employed at least one of the adaptation strategies such as early and late planting, use of drought resistant crops, zero tillage operation, crop diversification, use of mulching and composting of weeds to control water loss and conserving moisture in the field. This current research considers the following as potential factors determining farmers' decisions to adapt to climate change; economically active members, education of the household head, farm size, annual cash earnings, access to credit, training and extension. Findings reveal that these factors influence farmers' decisions to adapt to climate change in Nawalparasi District and marginal effects computed showed that per unit increase in these variables increased the probability of practicing different adaptation strategies by 4.3%, 31.4%, 3%, 1.5%, 17%, 66% respectively. The log likelihood was computed to be 43.45. Psuedo. R2 was calculated to be 39%

PDF

___

Abrol Y, Ingram K. 1996. Effects of higher day and night temperatures on growth and yields of some crop plants. In F. Bazzaz, & W. Sombroek (Eds). Global climate change and agricultural production: Direct and indirect effects of changing hydrological, pedological and plant physiologicalprocesses,123- 140. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, West Sussex, England.

Al-Karablieh E, Ahmad A, Hunaiti D. 2009. Logit Models for Identifying the Factors that Influence the Adoption of Barley Production Technologies in Low Rainfall Areas. Jordan Journal of Agricultural Science. 5: 251-265.

Apata T, Samuel K. 2009. Analysis of Climate Change Perception and Adaptation among Arable Food Crop Farmers in South Western Nigeria. Journal of Climate change and Adaptation. 4: 12-14.

Aris D. 2010. Farmers' perception on adaptation to climate change: A case study of irrigators in the River land, South Australia, Wageningen University Press, The Netherlands.

Deressa T, Hassan R, Ringler C. 2009. Determinants of Farmers' choice of adaptation methods to Climate change in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia. Global Environmental Change. 19: 248-255.

Deressa T, Hassan R, Ringler, C. 2010. Perception and Adaptation toClimate Change: The Case of Farmers in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia, The Journal of Agricultural Science.149: 23-31.

Food and Agriculture Organisation 2008. Climate Change Adaptation And Mitigation In The Food and Agriculture Sector, Technical Consultation. Document FromThe Expert

Fosu-Mensah B, Vlek P, Manschadi A. 2010. Farmers' Perceptions and Adaption to climate Change. A Case Study of Sekyedumase District in Ghana. Centre for Development Research, University of Bonn. 11: 20-30.

Gbetibouo G. 2009. Understanding Farmers' Perception and Adaptations to climate change and Variability,: International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.

Gunjal K. 2008. Crop And Food SupplyAssessment Mission To Zimbabwe, Food and Agriculture Organisation/World Food Programme.

Hosmer D, Lemeshew S. 1989. Applied Logistic Regression. A Wiley-Inter ISBN 1-920160-01-09.

Kalyebara R. 1999. A comparison of factors affecting adoption of improved coffee management recommendations between small and larger farmers in Jordan. Jordan journal of Agricultural sciences. 5: 45-67.

Maharjan K, Joshi N, Piya L. 2009. Sources of climate change, its impact, and mitigation issues in Nepal.International Conference on Climate Change, Livelihoods, and Food security. Jaipur, India. Institute of Development Studies.

MOPE. 2000. Implementation of UN Convention to Control Desertification. Ministry of Population and Environment, HMG Nepal, Kathmandu.

Ramison D. 2006. The Perception and Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa,CEEPA Discussion Paper No. 10 Special Series on Climate Change and Agriculture in Africa science Publication, New York.

Schmidhuber J, Tubiello, F. 2007. Global food security under climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), 104(50), 19703-19708.

Seo S, Mendelsohn R. 2006. Climate Change Adaptation In Africa: A Microscopic Analysis Of Livestock Choice. 5: 20-30.

Shrestha B, Wake C, Mayewski P, Dibbl J. 1999. Maximum temperature trends in the Himalaya and its vicinity. An analysis based on temperature records from Nepal. 12: 277-278.

Smit B, Burton I. 1999. The Science of Adaptation: A Framework for Assessment. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. 4: 199-213.