Abstract:
Due to the important role that the agricultural sector plays in sustaining growth and reducing poverty in developing countries, the adoption of practices that have the potential to simultaneously improve agricultural productivity while minimizing
environmental impacts is essential. This paper examines the determinants of farmers’ perceptions of climate change and
subsequent adoption of sustainable land management practices in the Niger basin of Benin. Binary and multivariate probit
models are applied in a two-stage regression procedure to cross-sectional data collected through a survey of 545 randomly
selected farm households in 28 villages. The findings indicate that there are substitutabilities among three pairs of sustainable land management practices being used by the farmers. Climate change perception is positively related to land tenure,
experience in farming, number of relatives, tractor use, and membership in farmers’ organizations, and negatively related to
household size, remoteness, and plough use. Moreover, the findings reveal that the uptake of land management practices is
related to assets, land tenure, education level of the household head, remoteness, social network, non-irrigated land size,
having a farm located near a river/lake/stream, tractor and plough use, being a subsistence farmer or not, and memberships
in farmers’ organizations. The adoption of sustainable land management practices could be encouraged through improving
access to markets, adequate roads, and technologies, as well as by promoting membership in farmers’ organizations
