An Assessment of the level of Farmers Awareness and Adaptation to Climate Change in Northern Taraba State, Nigeria

This paper investigated the extent of awareness of climate change by local farmers in northern part of Taraba State, Nigeria. The study explores the choice of adaptation measures employed by the local farmers and the constraints to such measures. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze data obtained from a survey of 248 farmers from 31 villages in six local government areas of northern Taraba State. The finding of the study reveals that about 88% of the farmers are aware of climate change in the study area, however, only 48% of the respondents claimed they know the causes of climate change. 90% of the farmers claimed that they have been affected by recent changes in climate in the study area through low rainfall, excess rainfall, flooding and extreme high temperature. The study findings show that most of the farmers' opinion, observations and adaptation measures to climate change agrees with experts report. The study findings show that the common adaptation measures applied by the local farmer's in the study area include altering of planting season, use of different tillage system, use of tolerant seed variety, planting early maturing variety and crop diversification/mixing. Despite the peoples' awareness and adaptation to climate change in the study area, lack of finance hinders farmers from getting the necessary resources and technologies that facilitate adapting to climate change. The study recommends the need to increase farmers' accessibility to information on adaptive research findings on early maturing, insect/pest tolerant, and high yielding varieties through increase extension service and soft loans to the farmers.