Research Article
Apata O.M. & A.O. Adekunmi
Abstract
Climate change has in the recent years become a global concern. Both developed and developing countries of the world have now began to sensitize their people and creating awareness about recent climate change and its effect. The study analyses farmers’ knowledge adaptation strategies to climate change challenges among arable crop farmers in Southwestern Nigeria. Primary was data collected from 120 farmers and were analyzed using descriptive statists such as percentages and means score derived from a 4 – point likert scale, chi-square (x) was used to determine the relationship between socio economic characteristics of respondents and their adaptation strategies to effect of climate change. The study established that the farmers’ awareness level is not above average. Some farmers indicated that they were not being aware of any change in climate conditions. Major manifestations in the study area include: High temperature, irregular rainfall distribution, high relative humidity, hamattan, increased sunshine intensity and all these led to diseases, pests infestations, late maturation of crops, extinction of crops, and other effects like fire outbreak, drought erosion etc. Furthermore, the study showed that farmers have taken some measures such as changing in cropping pattern (21.7%), adoption of new technologies (34.2%),use of resistant crop varieties (20.0%). The above adaptation strategies are however faced with some constraints such as financial constraints, technical constraints, cultural constraints and lack of regular climate information among others. The results of the hypothesis tested show that educational level (0.70) social status (.231), farming experience (.292) and annual income (.287) have positive relationships with farmers’ adaptation strategies to effect of climate change. It is therefore, recommended that farmers should be more sensitized about climate change and both government and all the agencies concerned with climate change issues should direct their attention to rural areas to ensure effective response to the climate change.