Smallholder Farmers Adaptation to Climate Change: Adaptive Capacity among Ndiwa and Chamazi Farmers in Usambara Highlands, Tanzania

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major threats to agricultural production worldwide,including many parts of Tanzania. However, different rural agriculturalsystems are affected differently and differ in their adaptive capacities. Thispaper assessed the adaptive capacity to climate change by farmers engaged inndiwa and chamazi traditional irrigation farming systems in West UsambaraHighlands , Tanzania. The study leading to this paper was conducted in fourvillages: Shashui, Nkukai, Lunguza and Kivingo in Lushoto District; and itadopted a cross-sectional research design involving a sample of 380 households.Data were collected through household survey, Focus Group Discussions(FGDs), observations and documentary reviews. Undeniably, farmers are notpoor of what and how to adapt with climate change: they have some knowledgeon what they can do to reduce and contain the adverse impacts of climatechange. The results show that whereas ndiwa farmers have moderate adaptivecapacity (41.6%), chamazi farmers have low adaptive capacity (23.6%) to climatechange impacts. Despite this difference in capacities, both farmers are affectedby low financing (ndiwa (14.36%), and chamazi (8.48%) as grants or creditshardly reach small-scale farmers; low access to technical information (ndiwa(15.08%), and chamazi (5.17%)); relative low access to physical infrastructure(ndiwa (5.02%), and chamazi (3.02%)); relative low level of diversity of livelihood(ndiwa (4.56%), and chamazi (4.49%)); and relative low level of human resources(ndiwa (2.51%), and chamazi (2.35%)). The paper recommends that strategiesfor enabling farmers to become change agents of climate change should buildcapacity in areas of physical resources such as equipment and infrastructure forirrigation, access to climate information, access to financing opportunities,livelihood diversification, and storage.