The choice of climate change adaptation strategies among food crop farmers in Southwest Nigeria

The performance of food crop production is currently, greatly threatened by climate change. However, the extent to which these impacts are felt depends principally on the adaptation measures used by farmers to cushion the effects of climate change. This study centered on the factors that drive the choice of major adaptation measures by farmers in Southwestern Nigeria. The study used multistage sampling procedure to select 360 food crop farmers in the area. Primary data were collected through surveys to achieve this. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics and multinomial logit model. The results indicated that the main climate change adaptation strategies were multiple crop varieties, land fragmentation, multiple planting dates, crop diversification, off-farm employment and cover cropping. Factors influencing the choice of these adaptation strategies were household size, age, education, gender, average farm distance, access to credit, tenure security, and agro-ecology. A summary of their influence on the farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies suggests a relatively growing popularity for the use of cover cropping as an adaptation strategy among them. Increased use of cover cropping as climate change adaptation strategy should therefore be encouraged among farmers. In addition, land tenure security encouraged the choice of crop diversification among the respondents. This is also considered a very important strategy, given that different crops have varying degrees of resilience to climate change. A kind of land reform strategy that could make the farmers more land secured is therefore recommended.