Assessment of climate variability on small scale farmers, a case study of Namutumba sub county Namutumba district.

Abstract

Climate variability is one of the chronic challenges that the globe is facing in the 21st century in addition to terrorism, gender based violence and natural resource degradation. Before the intensification in the occurrence of extreme weather events, small scale farmers of Namutumba Sub County used to grow crops two seasons a year, with the harvest finding that of the previous season in the granaries, stores and they would have excess for sale to generate school fees and meet other financial needs of their families. The study employed simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques to get the data from sample of 60 respondents. Data was collected from all age groups of farmers using self-administered questionnaires, interviews, and observation. Microsoft office Excel was used for data entry while SPSS was used for analysis. This made it easy to come up with pie charts; bar graphs, as well as the Pearson chi square for the relationship between variable. Findings of the study show the major source of livelihood as crop farming, with maize as the major crop, and poultry as the major livestock reared by the small scale farmers. All the farmers whether crop or livestock are being negatively affected by emergence of new pests, weeds, vectors and diseases, floods; drought, erratic: rain, pasture and water scarcity, among others which were reported to be as a result of the variability in climate. These have caused a continued decline in the yield. It was noted that most of the fanners carry out their activities on land less than one acre with the use of locally available tools, and sell the output at 300 shillings especially for maize as the major crop. With the low level of education limiting the farmers to only crop and livestock farming, government and non-government organizations should provide inputs at a free or subsidized price, intensify extension services, educate the masses on adaptive strategies provide improved seed and animal varieties, among others if Uganda is to attain the ongoing sustainable development goals. This is because almost all small scale farmers in Namutumba Sub County are positive towards adaptation to climate variability.