Smallholder farmers’ resilience capacity to climate change shocks at Kikombo ward in Dodoma region

Abstract

Despite the fact that, climate change is a threat worldwide, semi-arid areas are more vulnerable to its distress. This study was conducted at Kikombo Ward in Chamwino District to examine the local community’s resilience capacity to climate change shocks using 73 families which were randomly selected. Cross tabulation, correlation, and Binary logistic regression were used to study the variables using IBM SPSS version 20. The results revealed that 97% of the respondents were aware of the impacts of climate change on agriculture, but only 43.7% were practicing Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Even though 43.7% of smallholder farmers reported to practice CSA, their crop production was still low which raises questions about the effectiveness and challenges faced in the application of CSA. The findings further disclosed that most of the CSA practices were not done in the farmers' plots or were done partially. Challenges facing smallholder farmers in practicing CSA included; a lack of knowledge on the proper application of the CSA practices (p=0.023) as well as the cost of tools and inputs (p=0.034). The findings indicate that, most of the households had low resilience capacity to climate change shocks and the community's ability to absorb climate change shocks depended mainly on income accrued from small businesses. Services provided to promote the adoption of CSA were inadequate and therefore insignificant in enhancing the adoption of CSA. In this regard, the government and development partner’s support are highly recommended for optimum CSA application in the community.