Investigations on climate smart agriculture practices use among smallholder farmers to cope with climate change and variability in Mozambique.

Abstract

The effects of climate change and variability on agriculture are severe, and constitute one of the most significant emerging challenges to household livelihoods in Africa. As such, it is imperative that efforts to address agriculture in the context of food security and rural development take climate change into consideration. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is defined as agricultural practices that sustainably increase productivity and system resilience, while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The study was focused on socio-economic characteristics factors; and the objectives of thiswere two fold: 1) To identify CSA practices used by smallholder farmers to address climate threats to agricultural production and livelihoods and; 2) To identify the factors that constrain and/or facilitatethe adoption of CSApracticesto cope with climate change and variability.A survey was held in two districts of Zambezia province (Nicoadala and Namacurra) using asurvey. Most of the questions looked into climate change and variability. Information was collected from 100 respondents fordatacollection and semi-structured questionnaireswere used using interview methodwith both opened and closed questions. For data analysis descriptive statistic and the binary logistic regression model were used with the purpose of describing the socio-economic characteristics and the technologiesused by farmers showing its percentages and frequencies and also to identify the factors that had significant influenceon adoption of CSA practices. The results showed that farmersin both districtscurrent use agroforestry, improved/ drought tolerant crop variety, minimum tillage, crop diversification, earlier sowing date, irrigation.The factors that had significant influence in the adoption of CSA practices were gender education level, size of the household and source of information.The study, therefore conclude that to increase land productivity in the study sites, there is a need to consider farmers` heterogeneity in terms of household gender, age, education, extension services. The study suggests that the government can put in place structures to educate the people to be able to access education and can promote training the extension service officers that they can teach people in the simplest term with the goal to enhance the adoption of agricultural technologies.