While climate change threatens global food security, health, and nutrition outcomes, Africa is more vulnerable because its economies largely depend on rain-fed agriculture. Thus, there is need for agricultural producers in Africa to employ robust adaptive measures that withstand the risks of climate change. However, the success of adaptation measures to climate change primarily depends on the communities’ knowledge or awareness of climate change and its risks. Nonetheless, existing empirical research is still limited to illuminate farmers’ awareness of the climate change problem. This study employs a Bayesian hierarchical logistic model, estimated using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) methods, to empirically determine drivers of smallholder farmers’ awareness of climate change and its risks to agriculture in Zambia. The results suggest that on average, 77% of farmers in Zambia are aware of climate change and its risks to agriculture. We find socio-demographics, climate change information sources, climate change adaptive factors, and climate change impact-related shocks as predictors of the expression of climate change awareness. We suggest that farmers should be given all the necessary information about climate change and its risks to agriculture. Most importantly, the drivers identified can assist policymakers to provide the effective extension and advisory services that would enhance the understanding of climate change among farmers in synergy with appropriate farm-level climate-smart agricultural practices.

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that small holder farmers face in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Zambia. In response to this, various interventions such as Agroforestry (AF) and Conservation Agriculture (CA) have been promoted within the country so as to enhance uptake among farmers and ultimately mitigate climate change. However, the adoption rates of these technologies has been low. To understand the adoption process several adoption studies have focused on the effects of socio-economic and other institutional factors on adoption of the technologies. The direct link between small holder farmer's climate change awareness and the uptake of both AF and CA is an area that has received less attention among these studies. This paper estimates the effect of climate change awareness on the adoption of AF and CA, and establishes whether the adoption of the two technologies is jointly determined in Zambia. Data used emanated from the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI) and University of Zambia (UNZA) Climate Change and Land Use Project that implemented a supplemental climate change survey in 2013 on Rural Agricultural Livelihood Survey (RALS 2012) panel sample of 1,231 households in six districts of Zambia. Results showed that the majority of farmers (77.2 %) were aware of climate change issues and their consequences on agriculture production and the environment. It was also observed that holding other factors constant, a farmer aware of climate change and its consequences was 6% more likely to adopt both AF and CA compared to those not aware. The decision to adopt AF and CA was found to be jointly determined by farmers. In addition to climate change awareness, the other factors affecting the joint decision to adopt the two technologies included gender, farmer group membership of the household head as well as ownership of radio sets and rippers. There is need therefore to deliberately increase climate change awareness among smallholder farmers and promote the simultaneous uptake of both AF and CA through the mass media and the provision of an environment that increases accessibility to tools that ease up the uptake of these technologies.