FARMERS’ PERCEPTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE IN PANCHAGARH DISTRICT

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to describe the farmer’s profile characteristics namely; age, educational qualification, farming experience, farm size, annual income, cosmopoliteness, training received, climatic knowledge, innovativeness and adaptation strategy and their perception of climate change, to assess the farmers’ perception on climate change and to identify the problems encountered by the respondents to climate change effects. Data were collected from the farmers of Boda Upazila of Panchagarh district from 3 May to 28 May 2018. The sample size of the study was 105 farmers and it was drawn from a population of 874 using random sampling technique. For collecting data structured interview schedule were used. Farmers’ perception on climate change was the focus issue of this study and it was measured by computing based on three aspects rainy season, winter season and summer season. Dimension wise perception of the farmers about climate change indicate that 65.0 percent mentioned the intensity of hot days in summer has increased, while 58.10 percent perceived that the timing of rain onset has increased and 77.14 percent believed that the intensity of cold in winter season had increased. In case of overall aspects it was observed that 61.91 percent of the farmers were medium perception about rainy season, 66.67 percent medium perception about winter season and 67.62 percent have medium perception about summer season. However, in case of overall perception it was found that 61.90 percent of the respondents had medium perception while 25.72 percent had low perception and only 12.38 percent had high perception about climate change. Among the 10 selected characteristics of the farmers’ six characteristics namely educational qualification, training received, cosmopoliteness, climatic knowledge, innovativeness and adaptation strategy showed significant and positive relationship with farmers’ perception of climate change and the rest were fail to found any relationship with the focus issue. The serious problems to coping to climate change faced by farmers in the study area included summer temperature increase (PI =313) and lack of knowledge on climate change (PI=112) was the least important problem indentified by the farmers regarding climate change.