Determinants of Climate Change Adaptation Strategies Among Farm Households in Delta State, Nigeria

The study examined the determinants of climate change adaptation strategies among farm households in Delta State, Nigeria. A total of 1200 farm households were randomly selected through multi-stage random sampling techniques. The study data was collected by questionnaire. Statistical tools such as simple descriptive statistics (table, frequency, percentage and mean) and a binary logistic regression model were used to examine the data. The results indicate that 43% of the respondents were crop producers while 31% were livestock producers. Majority of the farmers 100% and 99% adopted adjustment of farming operation time and increase use of agricultural inputs as their major adaptation measures respectively. The result of the binary logistic regression model demonstrated that the determinants of the likelihood of adopting adaptation strategies by farmers included the households’ heads age, gender, educational level, farming experience, access to credit, farm/herd size, membership of cooperative, household income, and access to weather information and access to extension services. Therefore, it was recommended that the determinants that influence farmer’s likelihood of adopting adaptation measures positively should be carefully examine, harnessed and properly utilized for sustainable rural and agricultural development.


Introduction
Climate is generally conceived as the expected weather conditions for specific geographical location. Climate change is defined as any long-term change in the statistics of weather over duration ranging from decades to millions of years [1]. It can be manifest in changes to averages, extremes, or other statistical measures, and may occur in a specific region or for the earth as a whole. Okali and Eleri [2] stated that climate change is the synthesis of the weather in a given location over a period of at least 30 years. The intergovernmental panel on climate [3] defined vulnerability as the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with the adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes and adaptation as, adjustments in ecological, social or economic system in response to actual or expected stimuli and their effects or impact. Climate change is a major threat to sustainable growth and development in Africa, and more especially in Nigeria. The evidence that climate change will adversely affect agriculture in Nigeria has become a crucial challenge. This challenge is composed of the likely impacts on ecosystem services, agricultural production, and livelihood [4].
Generally, losses in the agricultural sector due to climate change has economy wide consequences, like loss in gross domestic output, a decline in the income/consumption of the most vulnerable population; hence, a general deterioration in households' welfare.
The causes of climate change are both natural and anthropogenic as conceptualized. The on-going climate change and its associated global warming are expected to cause distinctive climate pattern in different climate zones, which will impact negatively on the ecosystem [5]. The major global environmental changes significantly affecting mankind according to Ikeme (2009)

Objective of the Study:
The broad objective of the study is to evaluate the determinants of climate change adaptation strategies among farm households in

Hypothesis for the Study
The study is guided by the following null hypothesis: a) No significant relationship exists between the captured factors and farmers adaptation strategies to climate change.

Study Area
The study was conducted in Delta State, of Nigeria created on

Data Source
This study was both primary and secondary data. Primary

Sampling Procedure and Data Analysis
A multi-stage sampling technique was employed in the study. First, Four Local Government Areas (LGAs) most prone to climate variability were purposively selected from each of the three agricultural zones respectively, giving a total of twelve (12) LGAs. The second stage involves the random selection of Ten (10) communities each from the LGAs using the proportionate sampling method; this gave a total of one hundred and twenty (120) communities. In the last stage, ten (10) farm households were then randomly selected from each of the 120 communities giving a total of one thousand, two hundred (1200) respondents for the study. Descriptive statistics, such as mean, percentage, frequency distribution and binary logit model were used to realize the objectives.

Model Specification
The binary logit model was used because its underlying assumptions are less restrictive than those of other methods and is free from problems attendant with the use of ordinary least square [7]. The observation on the dependent variable (Y) of this model is dichotomous that is, having a binary value of one (1) if the farmers adapt to climate change using various strategies and zero (0) if otherwise. In the logit model, it is assumed that the use of adaptation strategies is a long-linear function of the exogenous variables X 1 , X 2 of the term.

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That is L; the log of the odds ratio is not only linear in X i but also linear in the parameters.
Where: L = Logit model. P = is the probability of using adaptation strategies. Denote as, Therefore, the probability of not using adaptation strategies is: is simply the odds ratio in favour of using adaptation strategies, that is, the ratio of the probability that the farmer will use adaptation strategies to cushion the effect of climate change to the probability that he will not.
Thus, if P = 0.9, it means that odds are 0 to 1 in favour of using adaptation strategies. Therefore, if P goes from 0 to 1 (that is, as z varies from -X i to +X i ) the logit, L goes from -X to +X. That is, although the probability lies between 0 and 1, the logit is not so bounded.
For estimation purpose, we write the explicit form as follows:

Major Occupation/Livelihood Choice of Respondents
According to Gebru and Beyene [8], people make livelihood choices based on the level of their household assets or availability of infrastructure in their community. the major occupation and source of livelihood respectively. These findings conform to work by Olawuyi and Rahji [9], Ekong [10] and Adepoju and Obayelu [11], which stated that most rural households in Nigeria engage in multiple livelihood activities such as trading, small scale business enterprises and processing of agricultural goods and arts and craft in order to supplement earning from farming.

Adaptation Strategies Used by Respondents
It is evident that the farmers are aware of climate change in their locality and in response of the risks on agricultural productivity had adopted various adaptation strategies. Table 2 shows the various adaptation strategies adopted by farmers in the study area.
Percentage prediction = 92.73%, Goodness of fit chi-square (df = 11) = 83.94% (P<0.001), Negelkerte R 2 = 0.918. *, **, and *** represent significant at P<0.01, P<0.05 and P<0.1 respectively. The coefficient of age of household head was negative and significant at 10% level. This implies that as the household head age increases his/her willingness to adopt adaptation strategies decreases. The result contrasts work by Deressa [13] which pointed out a positive association of age with adaptation to climate changes.
The coefficient for gender was significant at 1% and positively related to adaptation to climate change. This indicated that as you move from 1 (male) to zero (0) (female), more male household head had better probability to take an adaptation measure than their female household heads. This conforms to a priori expectations and parallels the work of Deressa [13], Asfaw and Assefa [14] which Gbetibouo [16] and Nhemachena [15] which reported that access to credit increases the likelihood that farmers will take up portfolio diversification and buy feed supplements for their livestock.
Farm/herd size had a negative coefficient, and is significant at 10% level, implying a decrease in adopting adaptation measures as the farm/herd size increases. Farmers with large farm/herd sizes had lower likelihood of adopting adaptation measures in reducing the negative impact of climate change. As opposed to these findings Gbetibouo [16] reported a positive significant coefficient between farm size and the likelihood of adapting to climate change while Tesfaye [17] reported that number of livestock owned had a significant and positive influence on the adoption of fertilizer. But contrast Dressa [13].  This result also conforms to work by Nemachena [12], Gbetibouo [16] and Apata [4].

Conclusion
Conclusively, measures are continuously being adopted to