Smart agriculture practices for climate change relief: insights from smallholder farmers in Bushbuckridge, South Africa.

Abstract

Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) summarizes an expansion of existing sustainable agricultural intensification approach tailored appropriately to reduce the enduring constraints posed by climatic change. Notwithstanding the importance of CSA, the conceptual underpinnings are often left uncertain leading to disbelief as to practical realization and operationalization of the concept of CSA in South Africa. The study examined smart practices for climate mitigation and drew insights from smallholder farmers in Bushbuckridge, South Africa. The objectives of the study were: i) to investigate the determinants of adopting local CSA resilience strategies and ii) identify constraints of adoption of CSA. Structured and semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the respondents. The sample size of 255 was obtained from the population of 750 farmers involved in crops and livestock production in the area. One way ANOVA was employed to determine the mean variance of sampled population. The study used logistic regression to model the determinants of decision making. Results show that the following variables influenced adoption decisions making process: gender (p-value = 0.003); age (p-value = 0.039); farm size (p-value = 0.000); household size (pvalue = 0.001); marital status (p-value = 0.008); level of education (P-value = 0.000); support received (p-value = 0.041) and extension services (p-value = 0.001). Insights into the challenges of smallholder farmers in accepting climate smart resilience strategies were highlighted. The paper concluded that smallholder farmers require support to improve farming constraints. It was also recommended that the government should give support by encouraging farmers and investing in farm infrastructures correlated to CSA practice. A favourable policy discourse to encourage the use of CSA must be considered by the government.