Rice Farmers Knowledge and Attitude towards Climate Change in Southeast, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper analyzed rice farmers` knowledge and attitude towards climate change in Southeast. The specific objectives were to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of rice farmers; assess the level of knowledge of climate change among rice farmers; and determine rice farmers` attitude towards climate change. A purposive random sampling technique was used in selecting 160 rice farmers`. Data were collected using structured questionnaires, and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings showed that majority (58.88%) of the farmers were in their active and economic age bracket of 30-49 years. Majority (78.75%) were males, while (88.13%) were married and a greater proportion (46.25%) had primary education. The result also depicted that (28.13%) of the respondents had an income of over N60,000 per annum. About (84.38%) had rice farming as their main occupation while (33.63%) had farming experience spanning up to 13-15 years. Most of the respondents (28.75%) and (27.50%) had large household sizes respectively, with mean household size of 6 persons, mean farming experience of 8.80 years, mean farm size of 1.5 hectares and mean annual income of N34,100. All the respondents had high knowledge of climate change about rice production. Such knowledge as proper tillage reduces weed growth with a mean value of (X= 3.84), moisture stress causes severe damages to crops (X=3.81), and heat stress through increased temperature limits rice productivity (X= 3.77). Climate change is one of the ways God deals with evil in the world (X=2.59), I do not consider climate change when thinking about my future (X=3.04) and associating climate change with droughts, floods and heat stress over the last decades(x= 3.06) where the different attitudinal disposition of the respondents.