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Practising agroecology strengthens farmers’ perceived ability to cope with climate change

Riar, Amritbir; Heer, Alexander; Riar, Rajwinder; Ferrari, Leone; Joshi, Tanay; Hamadou, Ibrahim; Massawe, Veronika; Clément, Jous; Basset, Etienne and Messmer, Monika (2023) Practising agroecology strengthens farmers’ perceived ability to cope with climate change. In: Tielkes, Eric (Ed.) Tropentag 2023. Competing pathways for equitable food systems transformation: trade-offs and synergies. Book of Abstract, CUVILLIER Verlag, Göttingen, pp. 252-253.

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Document available online at: https://www.tropentag.de/2023/proceedings/proceedings.pdf


Summary in the original language of the document

Integrating agroecological practices into farming systems can improve farming systems’ resilience, but reported effects vary across geographies and production systems. Enhancing the resilience of farming systems by introducing new agroecological practices comes with positive and negative tradeoffs. Farmers’ decision to adopt new agroecological practices or additional agroecological practices is driven by factors such as other resource availability and/ or return on investment. In addition, farmer decisions are sometimes driven by motivational factors rather than return on investment. We hypothesise that farmers’ awareness about their ability to cope with climate change is correlated with the number of agroecological practices followed by farmers. To assess the farmers’ perception of their ability to cope with climate change and which agroecological practices they followed, we surveyed 3038 farmers in rural regions of Chad, India, Niger, and Tanzania. Survey questions were standardised in preliminary focused group discussions with farmers and other stakeholders. Individual interviews were conducted with the respondents chosen through systematic sampling, irrespective of their farming practices or other demographic factors. Correlations between agroecological practices, gender, and the farmers’ perspectives on climate change were investigated using the FactoMineR package in R. The share of female farmers’ participation in the survey was 50.0 %. Prevalent production systems in the regions are rainfed and organic by default. Thus, most farmers mentioned a change in rainfall patterns as the most challenging adverse climate change in past years, followed by more disease incidences, increased temperatures, and droughts. Crop rotation, Intercropping, mulching, and crop diversification are the leading agroecological practices for farmers in the regions. About 70 % of farmers in the regions perceive that they cannot cope with climate change. Farmers’ perception of their ability to cope with climate change strongly correlates with the number of agroecological practices they follow. On average, the perceived ability to cope with climate change was high for the farmers who practised one more agroecological practice than fellow farmers. This signifies the importance of integrating agroecological practices into farming systems to enhance their ability to cope with climate change. More country and gender-segregated results will be present to help site-specific decisions making by practitioners and policymakers.


EPrint Type:Conference paper, poster, etc.
Type of presentation:Paper
Keywords:Agroecology, biophysical and socio-economic factors, climate change, Abacus, FiBL65213, CROPS4HD
Agrovoc keywords:
Language
Value
URI
English
agroecology
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_92381
English
climate change
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_1666
English
resilience
http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_1374480530924
Subjects: Environmental aspects > Air and water emissions
Environmental aspects > Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Research affiliation: Tanzania
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Sustainability > Agroecology
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Sustainability > Climate
Switzerland > University of Bern
Switzerland > Other organizations Switzerland
ISBN:978-3-7369-7880-5
Related Links:https://www.fibl.org/en/themes/projectdatabase/projectitem/project/1961
Deposited By: Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau, FiBL
ID Code:52812
Deposited On:12 Mar 2024 12:48
Last Modified:13 Mar 2024 11:18
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Peer-reviewed and accepted

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