Smallholder Farmers’ Adaptation to Drought: Identifying Effective Adaptive Strategies and Measures

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges for South African food security is recurring drought. It is a major concern due to insufficient knowledge and the low levels of resources or livelihood assets available to farmers in vulnerable situations, thereby limiting coping and adaptation choices. The objective of this paper was to identify the current adaptation and coping measures used by smallholder farmers, with a particular emphasis on farmers’ vulnerability to drought and the adaptive measures or strategies that are effective in the study area. In addition, we determined factors influencing their choice of adaptation strategies. In this way, the extent of farmers’ vulnerability and how this affects the choice of coping or adaptation strategies during drought were determined. The multinomial probit model (MPM) was used to examine the factors that influence farmers’ choice of coping/adaptation strategies in the study area. The results show that the respondents’ human capital vulnerability to drought was very high compared to their economic and social vulnerability. Influences such as age, gender, and marital status contributed to their human capital vulnerability. The majority of the respondents implemented water-use restrictions as a coping strategy during drought periods. There were several reasons for this, such as the resources available, the effective coping strategy for that specific location/area, and the socio-economic status of the respondents. The inadequate contribution by the government to drought risk reduction, the age of the respondents, the monthly income of each household, and the inequality of decision-making powers between male and female respondents were also found to contribute greatly to choosing an effective adaptation strategy. This study contributes to the ongoing investigation of the adaptation strategies and coping measures used by farmers vulnerable to drought in arid and semi-arid areas in Africa. This is done by identifying effective adaptation and coping measures within the farmers’ operational environment, unlike other studies that have only identified adaptation and coping strategies without examining their effectiveness in the given environment. Also, the inclusion of the human, social, economic, institutional, natural, and political forms of capital as determinants of the farmers’ choice of adaption and coping measures provides relevant insights for efficient and sustainable policy design.

Impact of Agricultural Drought Resilience on the Welfare of Smallholder Livestock Farming Households in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa

“…The strength of the livelihood capitals in enhancing the resilience of smallholder farmers in this study for the Northern Cape Province differed from what Muthelo et al [47] found for smallholder livestock farmers in the Free State Province of South Africa. They found Free State province of South Africa smallholder farmers have high economic resilience capital followed by social, natural and human capitals.…”

“…Specifically, smallholder farmers' welfare was highly influenced by the economic resources available to the farmer, as indicated by the highly significant estimate of economic capital. This is consistent with the finding of Muthelo et al [47] in the Free State Province of South Africa. Another important capital with a high effect on welfare of smallholder farmers was social capital.…”

“…Although the natural resource capital available to the smallholder farmers was low, it still had a positive effect on their welfare improvement. Other studies have incorporated these capitals as explanatory variables for smallholder farmers' choices of climate change adaptation strategies [11,20,47,48].…”

Trend analysis of selected hydro-meteorological variables for the Rietspruit sub-basin, South Africa

“…Maximum temperatures in October (Figure 10 Although the SQMK detected several other possible change points after the year 2002 as noted by the crossing of the u(t) and u 0 (t) curves, a significant increasing trend at a 95% confidence level was detected to have developed around 2015 in October and 2016 in November. This is in agreement with the drought experienced in South Africa around the 2015/2016 period, which was one of the driest periods in South Africa (Muthelo et al 2019). The minimum temperature, which also exhibited increasing trends in November, showed that the increasing trend started in 1997 (insignificant) and the trend turned significant in 2001 (Figure 10(c)).…”

Smallholder farmer coping and adaptation strategies for agricultural water use during drought periods in the Overberg and West Coast Districts, Western Cape, South Africa

“…In this study, the term 'droughtcoping' refers to short-term interventions adopted during the drought, while 'adaptation' strategies are those interventions done to prepare for future droughts. Unfortunately, SHFs struggle to cope and adapt to drought without assistance from governmental and private institutions (Muthelo et al, 2019). This requires innovative approaches, which include knowledge-sharing and organisations and institutions to devise plans that will facilitate adaptation among SHFs (Muthelo et al, 2019).…”