Examining Highland Youth Farmers’ Adaptation Ability towards Climate Change Impacts

Abstract

This paper examines the highland youth farmers' ability to adapt to climate change impacts. This research applied a cross sectional survey involving 184 highland youth farmers from Cameron Highland, Lojing, Moyog and Kundasang. Respondents had a high adaptation level in relation to cognitive (M=3.79). Furthermore, the study concluded a high adaptation level in relation to practice among the respondents (M= 3.89). Interestingly, the respondents used creative initiatives in adapting towards climate change. The study stresses on the need for highland youth farmers to be proactive in strengthening their adaptation ability. INTRODUCTION Agriculture plays an important role for the socioeconomic development of a country like Malaysia. As the number of Malaysian population keeps increasing, agriculture sectors plays prominent roles to ensure adequate food supply for the community. Furthermore, agriculture sector provides solution for unemployment especially for those in the rural areas. Up to date, drawing on Department of Agriculture booklets (2015), there are 172, 230 farmers from several agriculture industries in Malaysia. In terms of economic contribution, in 2013, total exports of agriculture productivities exceeded RM106 millions Ringgit Malaysia (Department of Agriculture Malaysia, 2015). Similar to other industries, Agriculture in Malaysia is facing several critical problems and among the prominent one is the climate change impacts. A numbers of climate change symptoms such as rising temperature and unstable rain patterns were detected by local scholars (Kwan et al., 2011; Wan Azli, 2010; Wai et al., 2005). These symptoms are found to result in difficulties for community especially for farmers who rely heavily on weather stability for conducting their socioeconomic routine. First, the climate change impacts result in a reduction of farming yields and productivity gains. Rising temperature for example can cause drought. While warmer temperature is good for some crops, the similar things are not happening to other crops, grain for example, is affected by rising temperature as it prolongs the duration of seed growth and