Assessment of Sesame Farmers’ Perception and Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change in Machina Local Government Area, of Yobe State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study was conducted to assess sesame farmers’ perception and adaptive measures to climate change in Machina Local Government area of Yobe State, Nigeria. The data was collected from randomly sampled 63 sesame farmers in the study area. Descriptive statistics and Likert scale tools were used to analyze the collected data. The results’ findings show that sesame production is dominated by married male farmers (92.1%) that have an average age of 42 years, farm size average of 1.14 hectares, and an average farming experience of 15 years in the study area. The farmers were also found to have a household size average of 11 members; as well majority of them were found to have formal education ranging from Primary (31%), secondary (28%) and tertiary education (20%). The study findings further revealed farmers in the study area strongly agreed to perceive climate change majorly through an observed change in pattern of temperature (61.9%), and change in the pattern of temperature (46%). Meanwhile, climate change adaptive strategies used by farmers were majorly increased soil water conservation (3.17), use of chemicals, fertilizers, manure and pesticides (2.65) and using different tillage systems (2.52). The sesame farmers faced challenges of inadequate capital (69.8%), pest and disease attack (55.6%) as well as high cost of production inputs (54%). It can therefore be recommended that inputs subsidies and training on early warning systems of climate change shall be given to the farmers so as to improve their control measures to climate change.