ASSESSMENT OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS’ ADOPTION OF CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES: THE CASE OF BUGESERA DISTRICT, RWANDA

Abstract

Currently, climate variability and change has been recognized as a greatest global challenge facing humans being and their socio-economic activities. Rwanda like other developing countries has experienced climate variability and change, which declined agricultural productivities results into decreased national and household food security. To adapt to the changing climate, farmers need a transformation in their farming practices and adopt various practices that sustainably increase agricultural productivity as well as their resilience. This study assessed smallholder farmers’ perception to climate variability and change, climate smart agricultural practices adopted and determinants influence the adoption among farmers by focusing on smallholder farmers in Bugesera district, Rwanda. Primary data were collected from 204 randomly selected households survey, focus group discussion and key informant interview. Secondary data obtained from three stations under Rwanda Meteorological Agency (RMA) were collected to describe the trends in climatic. To address the research objectives, descriptive statistics and econometrics model were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that the majority (85.3%) of farmers perceived a change in climate variability and change where 55.9% of the respondents noticed decreased rainfall and 47% noticed an increased temperature. The results confirm that the likelihood of households to adopt change in planting time, crop rotation, Agroforestry, on-farm water conservation, and use of improved crop varieties were 80.9%, 68.6%, 79.9%, 59.8% and 78.2% respectively. The results from Multivariate probit model revealed that farm size, farming experience, access to credit, access to agricultural extension services, access to weather and climate information, climate change perception, social groups membership are the major determinants of various climate smart agricultural practices. To enhance the level of climate smart agricultural practices adoption, further interventions should focus on weather and climate information dissemination to the smallholder farmers to increase their knowledge on climate change and the climate smart agricultural practices established by the government can be managed by the smallholder farmers through their different social groups.