Socioeconomic Determinants of Banana Farmers’ Perception to Climate Change in Nyeri County, Kenya.

Abstract

Climate change is one of the key constraints to banana production globally. The extent of the climate change impacts depends largely on farmers’ awareness, perceptions and responses to climate change. This study examined the perception of farmers in Mt Kenya region, Nyeri County-Kenya of climate change impacts on banana value chain and analysed the socio-economic factors that influenced these perceptions. The study sites were purposively selected to include areas where banana production had been practiced since the 1980s. Data was collected from a hundred and thirty farming households between February and April 2018. Results indicated that 78.2% of the respondents perceived increase in rainfall and temperature as what constituted climate change. The major perceived effects of climate change to be high transport cost of banana to the market, low prices during rainy season and high demand of the produce during dry season. Results of logit model analysis indicated that gender of household head, farming system, type of farming and access to weather information influenced farmers’ perception towards climate change. Even though majority (78.5%) of the farmers perceived climate change to have changed over the years, 47.7% recommended accessibility of weather information on onset of the rainfall period, while 49.2% preferred information on rainfall distribution within the seasons in order to respond to climate change occurrences. These findings show that there is need to integrate policies that safeguard the smallholder farmers from adverse effects of climate change.