Climate change adaptation: Uncovering constraints to the use of adaptation strategies among food crop farmers in South-west, Nigeria using principal component analysis (PCA)

Abstract

This study focused on the constraints to the use of climate variability/change adaptation strategies in South-west Nigeria. Multistage random technique was employed to select the location and the respondents. Descriptive statistics and principal component analysis (PCA) were the analytical tools engaged in this study. The constraints to climate variability and change examined before did not use PCA but generalized factor analysis. Hence, there is need to examine these constraints extensively using PCA. Uncovering the constraints to the use of climate variability/change adaptation strategies among crop framers is important to give a realistic direction in the development of farmer-inclusive climate policies in Nigeria. The PCA result showed that the principal constraints that the farmers faced in climate change adaptation were public, institutional and labour constraint; land, neighbourhood norms and religious beliefs constraint; high cost of inputs, technological and information constraint; farm distance, access to climate information, off-farm job and credit constraint; and poor agricultural programmes and service delivery constraint. These findings pointed out the need for both the government and non-government organizations to intensify efforts on institutional, technological and farmers’ friendly land tenure and information systems as effective measures to guide inclusive climate change adaptation policies and development in South-west Nigeria.