Farmers' Awareness and Response to Climate Change in Kaffrine Region, Senegal

Abstract

This study analyses farmers‘ awareness on climate change and adaptation strategies in Kaffrine Region of Senegal. A better understanding of this awareness would help identify knowledge gaps of farmers on climatic change, and would help equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills on climatic change to boost crop yields. The study is based on a cross-sectional survey of 204 farmer household heads selected from nine communities through a multi-stage sampling technique. Data for this study were also collected from 9 focus group discussions and 9 key informant interviews. To analyze the data obtained from the households, a logistic model, climate change awareness index, and descriptive statistics were used for this study. The results of the study reveal that 64.7% of the respondents were aware of climatic change with an average awareness index of 0.5903 (59.03%). Also, a large number of surveyed farmers representing (90.2%), responded to the changing climate by adopting one or more adaptation strategies such as using different planting dates, using drought resistant crops, practicing crop diversification and crop rotation, cultivating early maturing varieties, applying chemical fertilizers, prayer/ritual offerings, implementing soil and water conservation methods, and changing the area/size of farm land. However, the major challenges inhibiting farmers‘ adaptation to climate change are labor constraint, inadequate credit, inadequate access to information and poor skills, inadequate access to efficient inputs, and inadequate access to land. The findings of the logistic regression model revealed that farming experience, farm land size, awareness of climate change, age, household size and educational level significantly influence farmers‘ response to climatic change in the study area. The study suggests that the government of Senegal should develop more effective climatic change adaptation strategies as well as improve dissemination of information to farmers through extension officers in order to increase adoption of effective climatic change adaptation strategies. Also, it would be crucial that farmers collaborate to form farmer organization to enable them have easy access to farm inputs and training on climate change in order to reduce their vulnerability and increase their resilience to the changing climate.