Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The impacts of climate change threaten arable crop farming by affecting the food produced, the weather they experience, as well as the health of farmers. The severity of these risks depends on the ability of farmers and their community to address or prepare for this climate emergency threats. The objective of this study is to ascertain the emergency response to the effect of climate change by arable crop farmers in Nigeria. The specific objectives are to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of the farmers, assess the perceived effects of climate change, identify farmers’ emergency response in dealing with the effects of climate change and identify the constraints to emergency response to the perceived effect of climate change by farmers. Multistage sampling technique and a proportionality factor of 10% was used to select 215 arable crop farmers for the study while questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. The results revealed that 50.2% of respondents were female, 28.8% were between the age of 51-60 years; majority (51.2%) had secondary education with 26.0% having less than N100,000.00 annual income and 73.5% had no access to extension service. Meanwhile, result from emergency response include, early weeding 99.5% mixed cropping 98.6%, and early planting and early harvesting 98.6%. However, constraints to emergency response include lack of knowledge about appropriate adaptation measures. It was recommended that climate change workshops be organized for farmers to teach them how to address the impacts of climate change instead of the emergency measures.