Smallholder farmer cropping decisions related to climate variability across multiple regions

By S. Wood, A. Jina, Meha Jain, P. Kristjanson, Ruth S. DeFries. 2014

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract A long history of household-level research has provided important local-level insights into climate adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. It remains unclear to what extent these strategies are generalizable or vary across regions. In this study we ask about three potential key factors influencing farming households’ ability to adapt: access to weather information, household and agricultural production-related assets, and participation in local social institutions. We use a 12-country data set from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to explore the links between these three potential drivers of agricultural change and the likelihood that farmers made farm-associated changes, such as adopting improved crop varieties, increasing fertilizer use, investing in improved land management practices, and changing the timing of agricultural activities. We find evidence that access to weather information, assets, and participation in social institutions are associated with households that have reported making farming changes in recent years, although these results vary across countries and types of practices. Understanding these drivers and outcomes of farm-associated changes across different socio-economic and environmental conditions is critical for ongoing dialogues for climate-resilient strategies and policies for increasing the adaptive capacity of smallholders under climate change.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07f8ecf69ee5958a80db6f2175617695ed7dd2e3

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Soil Science

Citations in the corpus

Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies of Agriculture in Mediterranean-Climate Regions (MCRs) (2019, background): “From an economic perspective there is an agreement that production scale, access to credit, costs, and benefits, among others, have a positive impact on adaptation [126,127,130].”
Linking agricultural adaptation strategies, food security and vulnerability: evidence from West Africa (2016, unknown): “Assets are a key indicator of the degree of poverty (Carter and Barrett 2006); households with more assets are more likely to adopt new agricultural practices (Wood et al. 2014).”
Farmer’s intended and actual adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies (2016, background): “2012) and across broader contexts (Wood et al. 2014) to determine drivers of climate mitigation and adaptation behaviors.”
Differential impacts of rainfall and irrigation on agricultural production in Nigeria: Any lessons for climate-smart agriculture? (2016, background): “As a result of climate change, farmers are now making changes and building resilience to vagaries of climate change (Wood et al., 2014; Kristjanson et al., 2012).”