Abstract

This study explores the farmers’ understandings and experiences about climate change. Information was collected through focus group discussions and household surveys in three districts (Banke, Chitwan and Morang) of Nepal. Farmers perceive climate change as increased variability of rainfall, increased temperature, increased drought frequency and period, changes in monsoon time, reduction of annual rainfall, decreased rainfall frequency and duration per event, decreased winter rain, and increased frequency of erratic rainfall. The significant effects of climate change include limited water availability, decreasing soil moisture, high fluctuation on crop yield, increased incidence of pests and diseases, existence of unidentified pests, emergence of new plant species, environmental pollution, high risk in fish farming, reduced livestock health, decreasing earthworm population, shortening life cycle of crops, low fruiting in fruit trees, fruits cracking, changes in flowering and fruiting time, and increased sand in soils due to flood. Farmers also notice the positive effect of climate change as automatic control of some pests (e.g. white flies in paddy). Regarding climate change adaptation, farmers are more concerns on the development of the irrigation sector. Besides the investment on irrigation, the farmers have been adopting some climate change adaptation techniques as crop diversification, shifting of agricultural calendar, crop rotation, changes of crop varieties, investment on plastic tunnels, mulching to maintain soil moisture, traditional pest management, more use of compost and farm yard manure in the field, provision of drainage canals in the field, agroforestry practices, and rainwater harvesting.