Climate change adaptation strategies by smallholder farmers in Nigeria: does non-farm employment play any role?

Abstract

Non-farm employment in agrarian communities in developing countries has received a lot of attention. However, its role in implementing climate change adaptation strategies is rarely discussed. This study employs a cross-sectional data to examine whether rural households in Southwest Nigeria are increasing the extent of climate change adaptation practices through their participation in non-farm employment. To account for selectivity bias, the study used endogenous treatment effect for count data model (precisely Poisson) augmented with the inverse probability-weighted-regression-adjustment (IPWRA) estimator. Both estimators found that rural non-farm jobs increase smallholder farmers' adaptive capacities and that participants would have used less adaptation techniques if they had not participated in non-farm work. Efforts to boost rural development must provide more employment opportunities for farmers, particularly during the off-cropping time. This will help farmers improve their ability to adopt more climate change adaptation strategies and, consequently increase farm productivity.

Keywords

• Socio-ecological system
• Poisson endogenous treatment effect
• Inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment
• Non-farm employment