Climate change coping strategies for household food security in Singida district
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Date
2009
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
Climate change has threatened Singida district for several years since the 1970s.
Fluctuations of drought and heavy rain are experienced by individual household members.
This has brought some adverse effects on social and economic life of the people. Despite
the effort made by the government to raise the living standard of people, food insecurity
has been one of the major setbacks to this effort. The major cause of the food insecurity is
climate change among other factors. The main objective of this study was to assess climate
change coping strategies developed and used by the farmer to sustain household food
security particularly from the brunt effect brought by climate change. This will help to
assist in enriching the existing and forthcoming policies on climate change and food
security and assist in providing an insight on how to deal with the impact of climate
change. Specific objectives used included; assessing the extent of farmers perception on
climate change, examine how the main alteration in the agricultural practices are
associated with climate change, evaluating the relationship between changed planting
systems and household food security, and examine indigenous practices associated with
grain yield relevant to climate change. A cross sectional research design was used. The
study involved 180 sampled people. A structured questionnaire and FGDs were employed
in data collection. Seven independent variables were modeled against dependent variables
using linear regression model. The findings show that the coping strategies adopted by
farmers include, buying food after selling livestock, selling of the family labour, buying
from off-farm money, changing planting date, and the use of wild sources of food. The
study recommends that tree planting, rain water harvesting, crop diversification, drought
tolerant seeds and carrying out inventory of wild plant used as source of food during
adverse effect of climate change should be paid special attention.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Climate change, Food insecurity, Singida district, Heavy rain, Fluctuations drought effects