Farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies towards weather variability: Empirical evidence from the three agro-ecological zones in Ghana

Abstract

This study analyzed factors that influence farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies toward weather variability and food crop production. The study used a cross-sectional data from 622 randomly selected farmers from 18 Villages across the three major agro-ecological zones using structured questionnaire. The study hypothesized that farm characteristics, climatic variables and extreme weather events had no significant influence on farmers’ choice of various adaptation strategies across the three agro-ecological zones. Employing Multinomial logit Model, the results indicated that irrigation farming, income-generating activities, crop diversification, tree planting and shifting planting dates are some of the adaptation strategies farmers used to adapt to changes in the weather and other related factors. The study thus recommends the intensification of the use of these adaptation strategies through support from government and other stakeholders to help the farmers to cope very well with the vagaries of the weather and improve food crop production in Ghana.

Keywords

• adaptation strategies
• weather variability
• food production
• multinomial logit and agroclimatic zones