Determinants of choice of climate change adaptation practices by smallholder pineapple farmers in the semi-deciduous forest zone of Ghana

Abstract

This paper explored the extent to which the awareness of climate change affects the choice of climate change adaptation practice by smallholder pineapple farmers. This study used a cross-sectional data collected from 150 farmers in the Nsawam Adoagyiri Municipality, Ghana. We applied the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify sub-population of pineapple farmers based on their awareness levels of climate change and socioeconomic characteristics. We then used a multinomial logistic regression to examine the extent to which differences in climate change awareness influence adaptation choices. Results indicated that, smallholder pineapple farmers are well aware of climate change and perceived changes in rainfall and temperature patterns. Further, the findings revealed that smallholder pineapple farmers are implementing a host of on-farm and off-farm climate change adaptation practices including irrigation, adjusting planting time, land fragmentation, the use of agro-ecological knowledge, and seasonal migration. The LCA identified three subgroups of smallholder pineapple farmers based on their level of awareness of climate change – strong climate change awareness group (n = 111; 74%), moderate climate change awareness group (n = 18; 12%) and poor climate change awareness group (n = 21; 14%). Results showed marginal differences in the adoption rate of adaptation practices across the observed subgroups of farmers. We identified that institutional factors including the quality of climate information, quality of extension services, access to credit, education and access to extension services have a stronger effect on climate change awareness and the choice of adaptation practice compared to individual factors such as gender, marital status and farmers' age. • Smallholder pineapple farmers are aware of climate change effects. • Climate change awareness levels vary amongst smallholder farmers. •Smallholder farmers are responding to climate change threats through adaptation. •Climate change awareness levels influence the choice of adaptation strategy. •Institutional factors have a widespread effect on the choice of adaptation strategy.