Farmers Awareness and Adaptation to Climate Change in Kaffrine Region of Senegal

Abstract

Climate change is a global critical issue that threatens the livelihood of most farmers, particularly in the developing countries. This study investigates farmers’ awareness and adaptation to climate change in Kaffrine Region of Senegal. The study involved a cross-sectional survey of 204 farmer household heads, selected from nine communities through a multi-stage sampling technique. Additional data was collected from 9 focus group discussions and 8 key informant interviews. 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%). This indicates that farmers in the study area are fairly aware of the changing climate. Also, a large number of surveyed farmers representing (90%) responded to the changing climate by employing one or more adaptation strategies such as growing early maturing varieties, crop diversifications, using different planting dates, using chemical fertilizers, practicing crop rotation among others. 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. 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.