Smallholder farmers are among the most susceptible populations to the effects of climate change, but efforts to aid in farmer adaptation are hampered by a lack of knowledge on how they are coping with and adapting to the changes. In order to tailor adaptation programmes to the various contexts of smallholder farmers, more knowledge is required about how different types of smallholder farmers perceive and react to climate change differently.
Smallholder farmers are at great risk due to climate change, which also poses a danger to global advancements in eradicating poverty, ensuring food security, and fostering sustainable development (Vermeulen et al 2012). Around the world, there are 475 million smallholder farmers who work less than 2 hectares of land, many of them are destitute, endure food insecurity, and live in extremely risky circumstances (Lipper et al 2014). Due to their reliance on rain-fed agriculture, cultivation of marginal land, and lack of access to technical or financial assistance that may help them engage in more climate-resilient agriculture, smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate change (Cohn et al 2017).
Despite mounting evidence of smallholder farmers’ susceptibility to climate change and growing interest in ensuring food security in the face of it (Vermeulen et al. 2012), adaptation efforts are still hampered by a lack of knowledge about how smallholder farmers are coping with and adapting to the change. In order to develop policies, institutional responses, and strategies for smallholder farmer adaptation, policy makers, donors, and practitioners need precise, context-specific data on the effects of climate change that smallholder farmers are experiencing, as well as whether (and how) they are modifying their management strategies to deal with these impacts (Castellanos et al 2017).
Demographics of the family have an impact on farmers’ ability to make wise adaptation decisions. Farm size, income, market accessibility, access to climate information and extension, and animal output also have a favourable impact. In places like Zambia, where small-scale agriculture is essential to economic growth, food security, and local lives, understanding the effects of climate change on smallholder farmers and creating effective adaptation techniques are crucial challenges. Additionally, additional knowledge is required about the variations in smallholder farmer vulnerability and responses across various farming systems and socioeconomic contexts. By examining the factors of adaptive ability, the demands for resilience of smallholder farmers who have the potential to act may be broken down for targeted climate change and intervention.
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