Yam Farmers’ Adaptation Practices towards Climate Change Disaster in Cross River State, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper focused broadly on exploring yam farmers’ adaptation practices towards climate change disaster in Cross River State, Nigeria. The study employed a survey design involving 150 respondents (farmers). Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and descriptive statistics were employed to actualize the objectives while t-test was adopted to test the hypothesis. The results show that some of the socio-economic variables such as; age, number of years in school, farmer’s membership in associations, access to extension facilities and hectarage of farm land significantly influenced farmer’s adoption of climate change adaptation strategies at P<0.05. The result also shows that the strategies adopted by farmers in order of widespread use by farmers were; multiple cropping, crop diversification, multiple planting dates, cover cropping and fertilizer application, irrigation practices, mulching, land fragmentation, tree planting, organic manure and fallowing. The paper recommended that farmers should organise sensitisation programs in their communities to educate themselves on the more effective measures to employ to adapt to climate change in their yam production.