An Analysis of crop farmer's resilience to climate change in the Thulamela Local Municipality of Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

Climate change is a well-known phenomenon, and it affects agriculture negatively. Due to the rising impacts of climate change, this study sought to assess resilience strategies that have been adopted by farmers to mitigate against the effects of climate change in the Thulamela Local Municipality. A mixed research design was used in this study. The simple random sampling techniques was used to select a sample of 180 farmers from a population of 300 registered farmers that used resilient strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change in Thulamela Municipality. Data was collected using structured questionnaires. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 27) was used to analyse the data. The study used descriptive statistics, to analyse the socio-economic characteristics of farmers that have adopted resilience strategies and challenges faced by farmers when adopting the resilience strategies. Furthermore, the principal component analysis model was used to analyse the resilient strategies adopted by farmers and multinomial regression analysis was used to analyse the factors influencing the choice of resilient strategies by farmers. The study found that there are more females than male farmers that use resilient strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change and that farmers with more farming experience adopt better these strategies than those with fewer experience. It was also found that most farmers that participate in using resilient strategies have formal education. The resilient strategies used by farmers were crop diversification, soil conservation practice and crop management, cover crops and rainwater harvesting, fertilizer application and the use of resilient crop varieties. Again, the study revealed that the most common factors influencing the adoption of resilience strategies were educational level, extension support, farming under irrigation, having an income. The result on the challenges that farmers faced while adopting to the resilience strategies indicate that farmers are unable to access credit, they do not have enough agricultural information, they have no proper guidance in using some resilient strategies, they do not have enough water on their farms. The study recommends that extension officers should facilitate networking among farmers, wherein farmers with more farming experience could assist farmers with less experience on the best adoption of resilient strategies Also, there should be mechanisms to assist farmers to adopt resilience strategies even if they are expensive to adopt within their practices.