Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change on Sri Lankan Agriculture: Case Study of Kurunegala District

Abstract

Farmers are accustomed to cope with year-to-year changes in the climate but climate change is expected to accelerate the need and magnitude of farmers’ adaptation. Based on a survey of farmers in Kurunegala District (89 responses), this paper assesses how farmers perceive climate change, and how they adapted strategies as this directly affected their livelihood. Interquartile Range and median were used to measure the perceptions and multiple response model was adopted to understand the adaptation strategies of farmers. The small interquartile range proved that respondents’ opinions are highly consensus on farmers’ perceptions on climate change. Further, all respondents, which were 76, agreed with the fact that there is an increase in temperature, supported by the trend analysis. Farmers appear to be well aware of climate change and only 1.2% of farmers seemed not to have actively undertake adaptation measures to counteract climate change. Indeed, almost 98% undertook some kind of remedial action. The adaptation options observed in the study area are diverse but the main adaptation strategies of farmers including planting short season variety and changing crop planting dates were identified