- Title
- Farmers' vulnerability to climate change and variability and adaptation strategies : a case study of commercial tobacco farmers in Zimbabwe
- Creator
- Nyathi, Confidence G
- Subject
- Climatic changes Global environmental change
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Doctoral
- Type
- PhD
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10353/9111
- Identifier
- vital:34269
- Description
- The fast track land reform program (FTRLP) of 2000 in Zimbabwe resulted in a dynamic change of Zimbabwe’s agricultural landscape. It resulted in the conversion of white owned commercial farms into resettlement models A1 and A2. Model A1 was intended to decongest communal areas and was targeted at land-constrained farmers in communal areas. Model A2 on the other hand was a commercial settlement scheme comprising small, medium and large scale commercial settlement, intended to create a cadre of black commercial farmers. This model was in principle, targeted at any Zimbabwean citizen who could prove farming experience and/or resource availability and was based on the concept of full cost recovery from the beneficiary (Musemwa, 2011) This study looked at the demographic that constitutes of commercial tobacco farmers, in Zimbabwe after the FTLRP, how they are affected by climate change and variability and how they adapt to these climate extremes; in particular, their uptake of crop insurance. The study was quantitative and utilised a structured pre-coded questionnaire to interview 158 farmers that are into commercial tobacco farming in Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West and Mashonaland East Provinces of Zimbabwe. The focus was on two central themes. The first was an investigation of the commercial tobacco farmers’ vulnerability to climate change and variability in Zimbabwe. The second theme analysed the factors influencing the farmers’ adoption of crop insurance and the challenges faced by both the farmers and insurance companies in its adoption. Three approaches were used to address the above objectives. Firstly to analyze the vulnerability of commercial tobacco farmers to climate change and variability, the integrated vulnerability assessment approach using vulnerability indicators from four tobacco producing provinces in Zimbabwe was used. The vulnerability indicators used included a series of different socio-economic, institutional and biophysical attributes which were further categorized into three classes, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC 2001) definition of vulnerability, which consists of adaptive capacity, sensitivity and exposure. The LV Index and LVI-IPCC Index (Ms Excel) were then used to determine the farmer’s vulnerability index. Secondly, descriptive statistics were used to determine the manner in which farmers have been adapting to climate change and variability and lastly, the study used the binary logistic regression model to determine factors that influence the adoption of crop insurance by these farmers. The results from the analysis show that the net effect of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity is moderate for the provinces of Mashonaland East, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West and Manicaland. Through the LVI Index and LVI-IPCC index, the study found indices of 0.566 and 0.100 respectively showing that the commercial farmers in these provinces are moderately vulnerable to the effects of climate change and variability. The factors that contributed the most to this vulnerability were aspects of finance, knowledge and skills, support services, and the state of the environment. In terms of adaptation, the majority of farmers indicated that they were aware of climate change and were aware of increased climate variability and had observed an increase in temperature and rainfall variability. The different ways in which the farmers adapted included, off-farm income, enterprise diversification, irrigation, crop rotation, conservation tillage practices, establishing woodlots and using alternative fuel for curing such as coal. The binary logistic regression model showed that the factors that were significant with a positive effect on the uptake of crop insurance are; subscription to contract farming which was the major determinant, access to crop insurance information, farm tenure and area under tobacco. Factors that had a significant but negative effect, and led to a reduction in the uptake of crop insurance were level of education, perception of crop insurance premiums and enterprise diversification. The farmers were found to be highly diversified either with off-farm income, crop diversification and or enterprise diversification. The study recommended that the farmers should promote sustainable development through their production activities and adaptation strategies adopted to increase their resilience to climate change and variability. Strengthening of social networks and institutional capacities was also recommended to; increase bargaining power, for information dissemination and provision of technical support and extension services to enable the farmers to take on appropriate measues to reduce their vulnerability. In terms of crop insurance uptake, the study recommended improvement in the dialogue between the farmers and insurance companies, and periodic training and education of farmers to improve knowledge and encourage uptake.
- Format
- 229 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- University of Fort Hare
- Publisher
- Faculty of Science and Agriculture
- Language
- English
- Rights
- University of Fort Hare
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Confidence.pdf | 3 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |