Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Smallholder Farmers and Adaptation Strategies in Southwest Nigeria

Abstract

The overall objective of this study was to design effective adaptation response strategy based on improved knowledge of climate variability and change for smallholder farmers in South-west Nigeria. The study had three specific objectives, namely: to assess the trends of climate variability and change, profiles and perceptions of smallholder famers in South West of Nigeria; to examine the impacts of climate variability and change on the smallholder farmers and; to evaluate the adaptation strategies implemented by the smallholder farmers. The study relied on primary data from a sample of 411 household heads. The study also used Social Analysis System (SAS2), multi-stage sampling techniques, household survey, focused group discussion and key informant interview. Secondary data were obtained from credible publications and the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet). The Meteorological data from 1985 to 2015 comprising of rainfall, temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and sunshine were collected from NiMet. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences, MS Excel, SAS2 tool, Instat and Standardized Anomaly Index (SAI) were used to process the data. The Coefficient of variation (CV), Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) and Adaptation Decision Matrix (ADM) were the key inferential statistics employed for analysis, while the graphs, charts and tables were used to present the data in descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages. The findings showed that though the duration of rainfall decreased, the intensity had increased by 2.1mm per annum with high degree of variability and these trends are likely to continue. It further showed an erratic rainfall pattern which resulted in late onset and early cessation. The average maximum temperature (TMax) and minimum temperature (TMin) increased by 0.040C and 0.030C per annum, respectively, with less variability but high intensity; relative humidity increased by 0.01% per annum with less variability; and the wind speed also increased by 2.14mph per annum, with high variability; while a decrease of -0.035W/m2 per annum was recorded for solar irradiation with high degree of variability. The perception of farmers varied on what caused the observed changes. The perceptions ranged from an act of God, sin of mankind and climate change. The findings also showed a gap in climate information services. From the findings, decreased crop yield, increased poverty level and a general downward trend in agricultural productivity were the negative impacts of climate change among the smallholder farmers. The results also showed that smallholder farmers practiced planting of different crop varieties, land fragmentation, minimum tillage, varied planting dates, irrigation practice, crop diversification, off-farm activities, mulching, cover cropping, use of inorganic fertilizer and change in farmland as adaptation strategies. From the results it was concluded that multi-stakeholders’ engagement was necessary during planning, designing and implementation of adaptation actions to ensure effective adoption and sustainability of such initiatives. Furthermore the Integrated Community-Based Planned Adaptation Strategy (ICPAS) model designed in this study provides an important framework that will contribute to reduce vulnerability, build adaptive capacity and resilience of smallholder farmers to the impacts of climate variability and change.