How do farm sizes and perceptions matter for farmers’ adaptation responses to climate change in a developing country?

Farm sizes and climatic perceptions are important economic and cognitive factors for farmers’ activities. However, little is known about how these factors are related to farmers’ responsiveness to climate change. This research addresses what matters for farmers’ responses to the climate change, hypothesizing that farm sizes, climatic perceptions and the interplay between the two are key determinants. We conduct questionnaire surveys with 1000 farmers in Nepal, collecting data on their adaptation responses, farm sizes, climatic perceptions and sociodemographic information in Nepal. With the data, the statistical analysis is conducted by employing the index to reflect farmers’ effective adaptation responses. The result reveals that farmers take adaptations as the farm sizes become small or as they have good climatic perceptions & social network with other farmers. It also shows that small-sized farmers tend to adapt much more in response to their climatic perceptions than do large-sized ones. Overall, this research suggests that agriculture may be losing responsiveness to climate change, as large-sized farmers become dominant by holding a majority of land in developing countries. Thus, it is advisable to reconsider the tradeoff between productivity and responsiveness to climate change regarding farm sizes as well as how large-sized farmers can be induced to adapt through their cognition, policies, social networking and technology for food security.