Climate Change Awareness and Joint Decision to Adopt Agroforestry and Conservation Agriculture Practices in Zambia

Abstract

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.

“Are They Aware, and Why?” Bayesian Analysis of Predictors of Smallholder Farmers’ Awareness of Climate Change and Its Risks to Agriculture

“…The listed farm households were then stratified into three classes, namely: A, B, and C, based on total area allocated to crops; special crops; numbers of cattle, goats, and chickens raised; and sources of income. To select at least 20 farm households distributed across the three strata in each SEA, systematic sampling was used [41]. While the total sample size for the 2013 survey in this study was 1,231, we used 1,227 observations because of the nonresponse/missing values.…”

Determinants of Climate Change Awareness among Rural Farming Households in South Africa

“…In the same frame of thought, Aphunu et al (2007) reported that most farmers claimed to be aware of climate change but, the understanding and the level of knowledge on the impact and adaptation were still low. According to Tembo et al (2017), it was reported that majority of the farmers (77.2%) were aware of issues related to climate change and its consequences on agricultural production and the environment. Also, Oduniyi (2014) indicated that climate change awareness among the small-scale maize farmers in Mpumalanga Province of South Africa was low.…”