Farmers Perception and Adaptation to Climate Change: An Estimation of Willingness to Pay

Abstract

This paper assesses farmers’ perception and adaptation to climate change to enhance policy towards tackling the challenges climate change poses to the farmers in Ghana. With regards to farmers’ perception and methods of adaptation, majority of the farmers perceived increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall pattern. Farmers’ level of adaptation was found to be relatively high with majority of the farmers using changing planting dates, different crop varieties, soil conservation and water harvesting as the major adaptation measures to climate change impacts. However, access to water, high cost of adaptation, lack of information, lack of knowledge on adaptation, insecure property rights, insufficient access to inputs and lack of credits were identified as the major barriers to adaptation. The probit regression estimation results indicated that the probability of willingness to pay for climate change mitigation policies increases with age, years of education and ownership of farm land.