Abstract:
The study examined the experiences of and adaptation to climate variability by farmers in the north eastern Ghana. A mixed research design comprising of questionnaire, focus group discussions and expert interviews were employed in the collection of data from respondents. In all 180 food crop farm household heads were sampled from four communities in the Nkwanta north district for the administration of questionnaires using the Jensen & Shumway formula. The qualitative data which was collected by the use of expert interview and focus group discussions were manually analyzed through thematic content analysis whiles chi square test, cross tabulation and binary logistic regression components of SPSS version 25 and Microsoft excel 2013 were used in analyzing the quantitative data. The results showed that most of the farmers have been farming for more than three decades. This made the farmers gain enough experience to declare their stance of having observed variation in the climate. An increasing temperature and a reducing trend in rainfall coupled with lengthy drought are the most common variation that most farmers have observed. The study revealed that because most farmers feel vulnerable to the effects of the varying climate, they have adopted measures such as a change in the planting dates, using drought resistant crop varieties, mixed farming, use of herbicides and fertilizers and mulching to make them risk-averse. The main socioeconomic factors that influenced farmers’ decision in the choice of adaptation strategy were age and size of household. It is recommended that the Ministry of Food and Agriculture through its agricultural extension department should ensure that more agricultural extension agents are posted into the district and equipped to beef up support, motivate and educate the farmers on modern ways of farming
