Climate variability indicators - scientific data versus farmers perception; evidence from southern Ghana
Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cogent Food & Agriculture
Abstract
Even though copious knowledge has been advanced in the extant lit erature on climate variability and change. Two schools of thought exist—one that
views farmers’ perceptions of climate indicators as erroneous and inferior, while the
other views, scientific data, specifically meteorological data, to be superior and
accurate. The accuracy of farmers perception of climate variability indicators is in
doubt relative to the scientific data. This article targets assessing farmers percep tion of climate variability indicators compared to the scientific data with an eye to
distil policy implications for climate variability resilience and adaptation. Using
cross-sectional data on 197 smallholder maize farmers in southern Ghana, the
article answers the research question: To what extent do smallholder farmers
perception of climate variability indicators align or vary from objective climate data?
We find variation between farmers perception of climate indicators and the objec tive data from the Ghana Meteorological Agency. Specifically, while farmer percep tions showed a decrease in rainfall over the past 10 years (2009–2018), the
objective data proved otherwise. Again, a contradiction existed between farmers
perception of sunshine and the scientific data. However, farmers’ perceptions of
temperature aligned with the objective data. The scientific data established coeffi cient of variations of 0.21, 0.04, 0.03, and 0.12 for rainfall, sunshine, maximum, and
minimum temperatures respectively. We recommend collaborative efforts between
the national research council’s, Ghana Meteorological Agency, and academic insti tutions to commission further studies that will test, confirm, and harmonize the
reliability of smallholder perceptions of climate variability and change in climate
adaptation efforts
Description
Research Article
Keywords
climate crisis, meteorological data, smallholder farmers, maize farmers
Citation
To cite this article: Daniel Adu Ankrah, Jojo Mensah, Jonathan Nicholas Anaglo & Seth Dankyi Boateng (2023) Climate variability indicators - scientific data versus farmers perception; evidence from southern Ghana, Cogent Food & Agriculture, 9:1, 2148323, DOI: 10.1080/23311932.2022.2148323