Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Decision Making Responses to Climate Risk Adaptation in Kasena Nankana District of Northern Ghana

Abstract

In the Sudan savannah zone of Ghana, climate change is real, accounting for the biggest production risk and uncertainty factors impacting on agricultural systems performance and management, smallholder farmers are adapting using strategies both traditional as well as strategies introduced by research. To contribute to improving poor farmers’ livelihoods and to overcome the gap in implementing adaptation strategies, understanding farmers’ perceptions and their decision-making behaviour related to climate change adaptation in the local framework conditions is very important. Therefore, the thesis (1) investigated climate related threats of smallholder farmers and their perception of climate change, (2) relevant adaptation strategies (3) identified and analysed relevant factors of farmers’ decision behaviour regarding adaptation and, (4) identified barriers to adaptation. To address these objectives, qualitative and quantitative methods were used; principal component analysis and binary logistic regression were used to determine the factors that influence farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies. The results indicate that choice of planting dates, choice of crop varieties, land preparation methods, marketing decision and related strategies were found to be the most important climate relatedstrategies.Thefactorsthatinfluencethechoiceofclimaterelatedstrategies are found to be age of head of household, experience in crop farming, access to formal extension services, observed changes in pattern of rainfall, amount of income earned from agricultural activities, observed changing pattern of temperature and presence of a market, among others.