Insight into farmers’ agricultural adaptive strategy to climate change in northern Bangladesh

Adaptation is an emerging issue to control the threatening consequences of climate change in the agricultural sector particularly. The present study aimed to identify the adopted strategies by the farmers and contributing factors that affected the adaptation strategies in the northern region of Bangladesh. The quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the collected data through an authoritative purposive sampling technique and finally interpreted and discussed. The results of adaption strategies showed different variations on pesticides usage. The probit model indicated that age, education, the cultivated area in an acre, housing pattern, perception on climate change and meal per day influence the farmers to triggers an adaptive strategy. The results of the binary logit model are also consistent with the probit model findings. The multi-nominal logit model indicated that age, sex, total cultivated area, and perception of climate change have negatively influenced to adopt strategy 2 (use pesticides), while age, family size and perception of climate change have positively influenced the farmers to adopt strategy 5 (use pesticides + take financial loan). As the farmers in these regions are highly dependent on traditional farming practices, thus, this study suggests that the combinations of the farmers’ indigenous knowledge with well-developed methodical adaptive measures are required to improve the socioeconomic livelihood of the farmers in the northern part of Bangladesh.