Impact of climate change on agriculture especially in Jessore and Sathkhira districts according to farmers’ mitigation strategies to climate change; evidence from farmer level data

This study studies the adaptation of farmers to demeaning environmental situations likely to be caused or exacerbated under global climate change. It examines four central components: (1) the rate of selfreported acceptance of adaptive instruments (coping plans) consequently of changes in climate; (2) ranking the potential coping plans based on their apparent importance to agricultural initiatives; (3) documentation the socio-economic factors related with adoption of coping plans, and (4) ranking potential limitations to adoption of coping plans based on farmers’ reporting on the grade to which they face these restraints. As a preliminary matter, this paper also hearsays on the perceptions of farmers in the study about their involvements with climatic change. The study area is included of fifteen villages in the coastal region (Jessore and Sathkhira districts), a topographical region which climate change works has decorated as prone to accelerated degradation. Five hundred (500) farmers take part in the project’s survey, from which the data was used to compute biased indexes for positions and to achieve logistic reversion. The rankings, model results, and expressive statistics, are stated here. Results showed that a common of the farmers self-identified as having involved in adaptive behavior. Out of 15 adaptation policies, irrigation ranked first among farm adaptive measures, while crop assurance has ranked as least utilized. The logit model clarified that out of eight factors surveyed; age, education, family size, farm size, family income, and involvement in collectives were meaningfully related to self-reported adaptation. Notwithstanding different support and technical interferences being available, lack of available water, lack of cultivable land, and random weather graded highest as the respondent group’s restraints to coping with ecological poverty and change belongings. These results deliver policy makers and advance service providers with vital awareness, which can be used to better mark interventions which build endorse or facilitate the adoption of coping appliances with potential to build resiliency to altering climate and subsequent ecological effects.


INTRODUCTION
This study asks how farmers adjust to changing climatic conditions, particularly drought. Agricultural lists first perceive the opposing effects of climate change at the farm manufacture level and then take adaptive actions to silent these adverse effects (Bryan et al., 2009) as adaptive actions are able to reduce susceptibility (Reidsma et al., 2010). Therefore, impact and adaptation are interlinked. it was evident that farmers incurred significant amounts of production losses due to climate change. This is focused on what mitigation strategies have been practiced by farmers in the study area to reduce their food production losses due to climate change. The specific inquiry questions investigated in this part are: (a) What are farmers' perceptions of climate change in a very severe drought-prone area of Bangladesh?, (b) What are the major mitigation strategies in the study Kabir 263 area?, (c) What are the determinants of farmers' mitigate choices? (d) What are the barriers to effective mitigation to climate change?
These four study questions will be addressed using micro data at the farm level. The organization of this part is as follows. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the literature. The theoretical framework is outlined in section 3. The methodology is presented in section 4. Section 5 reports and discusses the results while section 6 concludes the part.

Change and agriculture: a short-term overview of the literature
Climate change affects crop agriculture badly, particularly in countries in the lower latitudes of the world (Bryan et al. 2009;Liu et al. 2010;Teixeira et al. 2011). Alteration is seen as an essential policy option as compared to mitigation to limit the negative effects of climate change (Stern 2006;Kurukulasuriya and Mendelsohn 2008;Reidsma et al. 2009). This is because mitigation has an insignificant impact on the current stock of greenhouse gases in the short run and, moreover, it requires collective and global actions (Stern2006). There have been several studies examining the potential effects of climate change on agriculture globally (Adam et al. 1990;Mendelsohn et al. 1994;Adams et al. 1995Adams et al. , 1999Iglesiasetal.2000;Kabubo-Mariara and Karanja 2007;Kurukulasuriya and Ajwad 2007;Wang et al. 2009). The earlier studies assumed either no or little adaptation at an aggregate level. However, farmers' mitigation has been under researched especially at the farm level. Furthermore, an analysis of the determinants of adaptation strategies is limited in the climate change impact literature. Nevertheless, a g r o economic rationality implies that addressing climate change requires mitigate strategies and farmers usually make adjustments in their production processes to overcome any negatives experienced (Kaufmann 1998). Adaptation is very important if farmers are to counter the potential unfavourable impacts of climate change (Kabubo-Mariara and Karanja 2007;Stern 2007;Hassan and Nhemachena 2008;Reidsma et al. 2010). Adaptive measures are able to protect the livelihoods of poor farmers and ensure food security by reducing the potential negative impacts and reinforcing the advantages associated with climate change (IPCC 2001;Bradshaw et al. 2004;Reid et al. 2007;Bryan et al.2009).
There is a growing number of study on farm level mitigation strategies and their determinants globally (Seo and Mendelsohn 2008;Bryan et al. 2009;Reidsma et al.2010). However, mitigation in agriculture varies across countries. Different mitigation strategies are practiced by farmers depending on the climatic conditions, farm types and other conditions such as political, economic and institutional factors Reidsma et al. 2010;Hisali 2011). More precisely, mitigation choices are context specific and change from area to area and over time (Smit and Wandel 2006). Therefore, country or area specific studies of climate change mitigation are required. In this context, research studies for Bangladesh are very limited (Paul1998; Ali 1999; Ahmed and Chowdhury 2006;FAO 2006;Rashid and Islam 2007).
In 1998, Paul was able to document some modified measures on wheat and corn (local food crop) such as crop rotation, irrigation, gap filling, and mixed cropping. Also, Ali (1999) recognized some corrective measures such as construction of appropriate storage or housing and introduction of another species of rice that has high capacity to withstand high salinity hot weather. Rashid and Islam (2007) enumerated the most life-threatening climatic phenomenon such as flood, drought, cyclones and high salt concentration in the soil as major events that have serious adverse effects on farming operations and production. Excavation of DTWs were suggested by Ahmed and Chowbury (2006) and FAO (2006) during a focus group discussions and key informant interview as a measure to enhance irrigation, construction of ponds, cultivation of short-duration and drought resistant crops for jessore and Sathkhira districts of southwest Bangladesh However, none of these studies analyzed the determinants of farmers' adaptation strategies alongside the farmers' perception of climate change and the barriers to adaptation which are crucial for devising effective adaptation policies. Moreover, farm level adaptation strategies in the Jessore and Sathkhira districts have not been studied. Therefore, the objective of this chapter is to examine, using a detailed farm level dataset, farmers' perception of climate change, barriers to adaptation and factors affecting adaptation choices in rice production systems by using the case of farmers in greater Jessore, a severely drought-prone district of Bangladesh.

ASSUMED FRAMEWORK
Crop models or climate impact calculation techniques have been the most frequently used approaches to understanding the relationship between climate change and agriculture. Crop models are used to estimate the potential effects of future long-term climate change scenarios (Carter et al 1994;Esterling et al. 2007). Farmers' responses to climate variability and extreme climate events in these models are simply hypothetical, and either no adaptation or optimum adaptation is presumed (Rosenzweig and Parry1994). Furthermore, climate scenarios under these models are inevitably not the scenarios to which farmers are most susceptible. A complementary approach, vulnerability theory, is used to explore the relationship between agricultural systems, the susceptibility to climate change and extreme events and farmers' adaptation explicitly (Reid et al. 2007). The term 'vulnerability' generally represents 'the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change, including climate variability and extremes' (IPCC 2001, p.21). The vulnerability of an agricultural system is explained as a function of exposure sensitivity, which indicates the susceptibility of a system to be affected by climate stimulus, and the adaptive capacity of the system (Reid et al., 2007). According to the theory, vulnerability is positively related with exposure sensitivity while there is an adverse relationship between vulnerability and adaptive capacity which is the ability of a system, region or community to adapt to the impact of climate change (Reid et al., 2007;Li et al., 2010).
More precisely, if exposure sensitivity increases, vulnerability also increases but increased adaptations are possible to alleviate vulnerability. Exposure sensitivity is not homogenous. It will vary from farm to farm as the characteristics of the farms that make them more or less vulnerable to particular climatic changes and extreme events are different. Vulnerabilities to climate change vary also because of socio-demographic, environmental, institutional and social characteristics that are either exogenous or endogenous to the community (Diaz2008). Farmers' migate capacity to climate change is influenced by socio-economic, institutional and social factors.Socioeconomic characteristics include age, education, gender, household size, farm size, farming experience and wealth (i.e., household assets) Gbetibouo 2009). Institutional factors consist of access to extension services, climate information and credit, and tenure status (Deressa et al. 2008;Hassan and Nhemachena, 2008;Bryan et al., 2009;Gbetibouo 2009). Finally, social capital includes farmer-to-farmer extension services and the number of relatives living close by (Deressa et al., 2008;).These determinants may assist or restrict adaptation choices. In the case of agricultural systems, farmers are the first people confronting climate variability and change. It is thus essential to comprehend farmers' perceptions of and adaptations to climatic changes in order to diminish vulnerability and to enhance the overall resilience of the system (Reid et al. 2007;Li et al., 2010).

Study area
The extenuation part of this study took place in the same villages of Jessore and Sathkhira districts as earlier.
District level analysis of climate data reveals that average annual rainfall across greater Jessore varies from 839 mm to 2241 mm. Moreover, the district average totalrainfallforthe1964-2009 period is 1505mm compared Scholarly J. Agric. Sci. 264 to 2408mm for the whole country. Furthermore, the temperature in the district is as high as 44°C in May and as low as 6°C in January. In terms of extreme climate events, the district is severely drought-affected but is almost free from cyclones and floods (Ahmed and Chowdhury 2006;FAO 2006).

Data sources
The main source of data for this work is micro data obtained from farm survey. It was conducted by the researcher.550 households were chosen as sample. The households were randomly selected from 15 different villages. Data collected were based on sociodemographic features such as age, sex, education and house size, farm nature such as farm size and tenure status, institutional convenience such as access to farming extension services, climate information, credit and subsidy and farmers view on climate change and problems associated with its alleviation. Climate data (2010) obtained from BMD was also used to make a comparison and then a verdict on the extent and effect of climate change on Jessore and Sathkhia in southwest Bangladesh. Climate data from 1964 to 2009 for this district was used for the study.

The chance utility and a micro-econometric model theory
The selection of the model can either be multinomial proit (MNP) or multinomial logit (MNL).Since MNL model gives more accurate and precise estimation of result than MNP (Kropko, 2007), it was therefore used in this study to analyse the factors that affect farmers' choices of adaptation strategies. In the context of this study, a farmer can choose a strategy among 8 alternatives as follows: It is assumed that the selection of one of these strategies is independent of the other strategies. As stated earlier, the choice of a strategy is usually categorized by varieties of socio-demographic factors like age, sex, and education, access to information on climate and extension services. The main theory behind the fact that a farmer can chooses among the available alternatives is' random utility'. This theory enables the utility of each alternative as it is exhibited as a linear function of the observed features. Moreover, Farmers are expected to

Overview of climate change in Jessore and sathkhira districts and comparison to Bangladesh
These Jessore and Sathkhira districts are in the southwestern climatic sub-zone (Zone E) which is characterized by very hot summers and relatively low rainfall (Islam and Neelim 2010). Data on maximum temperature, minimum temperature and rainfall for the 1964-2009 periods has been analyzed in this Chapter to assess the changes in these climate variables. A comparison of the Jessore and sathkhira districts with the whole country was also made. Data source was the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. Although the minimum temperature in Bangladesh has increased over time, it has decreased in the Jessore and Sathkhira The difference between maximum and minimum temperature is always higher for the Jessore and Sathkhira districts as compared to the whole of Bangladesh as depicted in Fig. 3. The total mean annual rainfall has increased for Bangladesh while it has Scholarly J. Agric. Sci.  decreased for greater Jessore. Annual total rainfall in greater Jessore is far below that of the whole country as illustrated in Fig. 4. In addition to the changes in maximum temperature, minimum temperature and annual rainfall, the frequency and severity of droughts have increased in recent times in the Jessore and Sathkhira districts.

Farmer's perception of climate change
The respondents (Farmers) perceptions on the climate change in the last two decade were sought on various climate variables. The closed-ended questionnaire options were; increased, decreased, remain the same and I do not know.

Changes in temperature
97% of the respondents believe that temperature rises during the periods under consideration; a notice of decrease in temperature by the respondents appeared infinitesimal.
Moreover, 1% respondents says temperature during this period did not change and 1% respondents choose no knowledge of such information (see fig. 5). However, 98.91% of the respondents noticed annual rainfall decline (see fig. 6). Analysis of official rainfall data in Unit is consistent with the perception of the majority of household heads.

Changes in droughts
The respondents responses showed that the last two decade witness an increase in doughtiness however, cyclone and flood seems non-existence.

Changes in other climatic parameters
Other important climate parameters include groundwater, surface water, heat waves and colder weather. Farmers were also asked about these over the past 20 years. Farmers' views on these parameters are shown in Table  Table 1 Farmers perception of other climate parameters over last 20years  1. Almost 100% of the household heads perceived that availability of both groundwater and surface water had decreased. The severity of heat waves had increased for nearly 100% of household heads while the perception on the severity of colder weather is diverse.

Farm-level adaptation strategies
It is useful to discover adaptation strategies in order to obtain an understanding of an agricultural system's mitigate capacity (Reid et al. 2007). Farmers in the study area were asked to reveal their major adaptive strategies in response to changing climate. These are summarized in Fig. 7. Evidence from Fig. 7 revealed the several adaptation strategies that have used by the farmers.
However, the result shows the most adopted method as irrigation which accounts for 74.55%. Shifting cultivation and supplementary irrigation for Aman rice were other choices used. In addition to the main mitigation strategies farmers were asked about their secondary adjustment measures which are presented in Fig. 8. Changing planting date, cultivation of short-duration rice, using different crop varieties and supplementary irrigation for Aman rice are important secondary adaptation strategies. The main and secondary mitigation choices mentioned by farmers are very similar to those found in other studies for adjacent districts (Ahmed and Chowdhury 2006;FAO 2006). The adoption of these adaptation strategies implies that the farmers in the study area are risk-averse.

Adjust to the alleviation
Famers take other adjustment measures after adaptation has taken place (Mertz 2009). This is because mitigation incurs costs. Mitigate strategies might resolve one problem but they sometimes create other problems which necessitate an 'mitigate to mitigations' (Paul 1998;Mertz 2009).
Farmers in the study area do take other adjustment measures after mitigation (Fig. 9). The results reveal that 28% of households took loans from rural usury lenders and relatives, 26% sold their livestock and nearly 17% used their previous savings in order to undertake mitigation measures. Other adapt to mitigation measures included the sale of other assets, mortgaging of land, borrowing institutional micro-credit, and family members migrating to urban areas in search of additional income sources.

Obstacles to mitigation
Issues such as accessibility and usefulness of climate information, the institutional environment and the socioeconomic situation of households affect farmers' capacit  (Roncoli et al. 2002;Eakin 2003;Ziervogel et al. 2006;Agarwal 2008). Farmers perceived barriers to the adoption of various mitigation strategies (Fig.10). Farmers outlined the most important barriers as a lack of weather information, a lack of knowledge on appropriate adaptation strategies and a lack of credit (moneyor saving). Other important barriers area lack of own land, a lack of irrigation water and labour shortages.

Model variables
The mitigation MNL model with the 11 choices as exposed in Fig. 7 failed to produce realistic results in terms of arithmetical significance of the parameter estimates and on the edge effects. Following Gbetibouo (2009), the model was reorganized by categorizing closely related strategies into the same group. The merging of direct-seeded rice with short-duration rice, the integration of conversion of agricultural land into shirm farm with Agro economy, and the cultivation of jute, wheat, plum and different types of pulses were grouped into non-rice crops. Therefore, the options finally included in the MNL model had eight categories: (i) More irrigation, (ii) short-duration rice, (iii) Greater emphasison additional irrigation for Amanrice (iv) Altering planting date (v) agro-forestry  (Fig. 11).
However, the last category is the reference category in this analysis, the dependent variable of the MNL model is thus the choice of mitigation having eight categories. Leaning on the literature, the conceptual framework for this study was based on several indicators as identified in several previous studies across the globe (see Table 2).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The following assumptions were found in the extant literature for the conduct of MNL model and were observed in the analysis carried out in this study such as; all omitted variables their P-values equals 1.00, and X 2 value should be greater than 0.00. Literature shows that negative result is normal in the test statistics and IIA assumption is not violated by this, hence, the use of MNL is validated. Furthermore, relative risk ratio (RRR) represents relative probability of choosing alternative mitigation strategies. Therefore, Table 4 revealed the statistically significant variables moderating adaptation choices in the study area. Table 4 shows the gender variation in the mitigation strategies to climate change. Evidence from the analysis shows that gender divides (male and female household heads) is at variance in the adoption of irrigation. The males are more inclined as evidence from the table in the area of short-duration rice and non-rice crops.

Age of household head
The result shows that age of the respondents serve as a moderating effect in their mitigation strategies to climate change. Table 4 shows the significant of age for the short-duration rice plant with RRR value of 37.680* and P-value of 0.09. This corroborates the finding in the previous studies (Kebede et al. 1990;).

Education of household head
The higher the level of education of the household heads, the more the use of modern technologies for irrigation, supplementary irrigation, shifting cultivation, agroforestry, use of varieties of crops and other crops besides rice, however, the education of household head is not significant (RRR value) in the case of short-duration rice(see Table 4) .

CONCLUSION
The study clarified that out of eight factors surveyed; age, education, family size, farm size, family income, and involvement in cooperatives were meaningfully related to self-reported adaptation. Notwithstanding different support and technical intrusions being available, lack of available water, lack of cultivable land, and random weather graded highest as the defendant group's restraints to coping with ecological poverty and change belongings. These results deliver policy makers and advance service providers with vital awareness, which can be used to better mark interventions which build endorse or facilitate the adoption of coping appliances with potential to build resiliency to changing climate and following biological possessions.