Farmers' attitudes towards climate risks and effects of farmers' risk aversion behavior on inputs use in northern Togo

Abstract

This paper analyzes farmers' attitudes towards climatic risks and assesses farmers' risk aversion behavior on inputs use focusing on fertilizer, drought tolerant seeds (DTS) and labor allocation. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to collect data from 704 farm households in three regions (Central, Kara and Savannah) in subsistence agriculture in Northern Togo. Tobit and linear regression models were used to analyze the effect of farmers' risk aversion on fertilizer and DTS uses, and labour allocation, respectively. The results indicate that on average 86.22% of farmers have risk aversion behaviors. Widening the land devoted to maize cultivation would increase farmers' risk aversion while increasing the land devoted to sorghum, tuber and cotton crops would reduce it. Being risk averse leads farmers to reduce the fertilizer and DTS use and allocate more labor in non-farm activities. The more the distance to the nearest input market is, the less the fertilizer is used. However, increasing the amount of agricultural credit would increase fertilizer and DTS use. The study concludes that any implementation of new policies to address climatic risks and food insecurity in the study areas should take into account farm households' attitudes towards risks. Farmers are encouraged for regular visit to extension services whlie policymakers should give special attention to factors such as credit facilities and market access through development of transportation infrastructure in order to reduce farmers' risk aversion in the study areas.