Abstract:
Togolese agriculture is predominantly rain-fed and hence fundamentally dependent on the vagaries
of weather. Thus, it is negatively affected by climate change. The present study assesses farmers’
perceptions and adaptation to climate change to enhance policy towards tackling the challenges
climate change poses to the farmers in the study area. Descriptive statistics and multinomial
logit (MNL) were used to analyze data obtained from a cross-sectional survey executed
during the 2013/2014 agricultural production year in the maritime, plateau and savannah regions
of Togo. The analysis of farmers’ perception to climate change reveals high increase in temperature
and decrease in rainfall. These results are in line with the trend analysis of climate data that
records from 1961 to 2013 about the study area especially on the temperature. Furthermore, the
results show that crop diversification, change in crops, find off-farm jobs, change of the amount of
land, change of the planting date and plant short season variety are the adaptation methods employed
by the farmers. Moreover, with respect to the multinomial logit analysis, the results highlight
that education level, farming experience, access extension services, access to credit and
access to climate information are the factors that enhance farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate
change and variability. Thus, there is room for better adaptation if government intensifies activities
of extension workers and ensures that farmers have access to affordable credit schemes to
increase their ability and flexibility to adopt adaptation measures. There is also a need to include
climate change communication to facilitate exchange of climatic information that could enable
smallholder farmers to adapt to changing planting dates. Finally, investment in education systems
and creation of off-farm job opportunities in the rural areas can be underlined as a good policy
option.
