Title: Farm level adaptation to climate change: Exploring the knowledge, perception and practices of the small holder farmers

Abstract

Agricultural production is highly climate sensitive and mostly affected sector due to climate change. To limit or avoid such impacts, farm level adaptation could play vital role. Therefore, this study attempts to explore the farmer’s knowledge, perception, and their adaptation practices towards lessening climate change impact on their crop production in Bangladesh. Data were collected from the small holder’s paddy farmers through in depth interview based on semi-structured questionnaire. This study analyses the data by using descriptive statistics, scaling technique and multiple regression model. The influence of crop production is measured by selected variables including socio-economic and motivational factors and adaptation practices. The study revealed that most of the farmers felt that climate change is threat to their agricultural production though a significant portion of the farmers have no idea about climate change. The findings indicate that farm production is significantly affected by the farmer’s knowledge, training, adaptation practices and climate change. The results show that majority of the farmers uses some traditional adaptation practices including timely planting and irrigation, variety selection, fertilizer application, pesticide use and based on their traditional knowledge to manage their crop production for minimizing the impacts of climate change. However, a small fraction of the farmers received training from the local agricultural extension offices towards addressing climate impacts and adaptation practices. It is also mentioned that only few farmers applied scientific method and practices to limit the impacts of climate change on their production. The interesting findings reveals that the farmers who have higher knowledge of climate change and utilize appropriate adaptation practices, they have gained higher production and faced lower impacts of climate change. Thus, this study suggests that national government should take a deliberate policy to promote climate resilient agriculture, establish linkage between small holder farmers and local agricultural extension office and use of ICT for spreading the climate related information.