Adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices in the Gorganrood basin in Golestan province

Abstract

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a managerial approach that aims to optimize the interactions of agriculture and climate. Since the Gorganrood basin in Golestan province is one of the regions influenced by climate change in Iran, this study was conducted to classify how CSA practices have been adopted across this basin. The statistical population was composed of all farmers living in this basin (N = 76140), out of whom 384 farmers were sampled by stratified random sampling technique with proportional allocation using Krejcie and Morgan's table. The research was conducted by the survey method, and the research instrument was a researcher-design questionnaire whose validity was confirmed by a panel of experts. Cronbach's alpha also confirmed the reliability (α = 0.79). Data were analyzed by descriptive techniques and analysis of variance in the SPSS24 software package. The application of CSA practices was classified in the study site using the ISDM index in the ArcGIS 10.3 software package. The results showed that CSA application was generally higher than the average (1.63/3.00). The sub-basins were also found to differ in the use of CSA practices significantly so that the more distant a sub-basin was from the center of the province, the lower the extent of CSA application would be. Furthermore, some studied practices were costly and needed extension training, so they seemed to be largely overlooked in some sub-basins. Accordingly, different CSA actors are recommended to consider this approach a systematic and long-term solution whose implementation requires all-inclusive attention to farmers in different regions.