Smallholder Farmers' Perceptions of Climate Change and Conservation Agriculture: Evidence from Zambia

By P. Nyanga, F. Johnsen, J. Aune. 2011

232 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Actors involved in promoting conservation agriculture have often not taken into account perceptions of smallholder farmers of climate change and conservation agriculture as an adaptation strategy. This study documents smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change and conservation agriculture. Most farmers attributed climate change to supernatural forces. Smallholder farmers’ perceptions related to floods and droughts were significantly associated with adoption of conservation agriculture. The extent to which smallholder farmers perceived conservation agriculture as a climate change adaptation strategy was very low. This suggests existence of other important reasons for practicing conservation agriculture than adaptation to climate change. Policy implications of the study are: conservation agriculture projects should not only focus on technical approaches to increase adoption rates but also consider social aspects such as perceptions that are equally important in conservation agriculture. Inclusion of climate change communication to facilitate exchange of climatic information that could enable smallholder farmers relate to conservation agriculture as an adaptation strategy is essential.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Environmental Chemistry, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e2c3ba7171cab93a26360e6fc13ecfd4150b925

Citations in the corpus

• PERCEPTIONS AND ADAPTATIONS OF BEEKEEPERS AND HONEY HUNTERS TO CLIMATE CHANGE: THE CASE OF THE COMMUNES OF NATITINGOU AND TANGUIETA IN NORTHWEST OF BENIN (2012, unknown): “Studies on assessing farmer perceptions in semi arid environments of Africa have reported similar findings (Nyanga et al., 2011; Rao et al., 2011; Osbahr et al., 2011).”