Perceived effectiveness of adaptation strategies to climate change among rice farmers in Jigawa State, Nigeria: Implication for rice production

This study assessed rice farmers’ perceived effectiveness of adaptation strategies to climate change in Jigawa State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 183 respondents from whom data were collected using questionnaires. Data were summarised using descriptive statistics, Chi-square, and Pearson Correlation. Majority of the respondents were males (98%), married (90%) and had formal education (66.1%) with a mean age of 41 years. On the overall, more than half (56.3%) of the respondents perceived the effectiveness level of adaptation strategies to climate change to be low, whereas 43.7% perceived it to be high. Insufficient farm credit, high cost of raw materials, inadequate capital, high cost of labour, limited access to land and inadequate information on weather were the main constraints to adaptation to climate change. The inferential analysis revealed that years of farming experience (r = 0.172, p = 0.020), membership of cooperative (χ² = 4.207, p = 0.047) and level of education (χ² = 9.570, p = 0.023) and extension contact (χ² = 14.270, p = 0.000) were significantly associated with respondents’ perceived effectiveness of adaptation strategies to climate change. Efforts should be made to sensitise farmers on the efficacy, appropriateness and applicability of adaptation strategies to foster favourable perception that will trigger positive attitude and subsequent adoption of the strategies where applicable. Government should implement policies that support farmers’ access to credit facilities that is intended to help enhance farmers’ capacity to build resilience. Farmers should be encouraged to take up membership of farm base associations so as to enjoy the benefits therein.