Farm level adaptation to climate change: insight from rice farmers in the coastal region of Bangladesh

ABSTRACT

Coastal agriculture and livelihoods worldwide are highly vulnerable to changing climates, and Bangladesh is no exception due to its geophysical location. This paper examines rice farmers’ vulnerability, adaptation strategies, and adaptation barriers to managing climate change impacts in the coastal region of Bangladesh. Survey data were collected from 220 randomly selected rice farmers located across two coastal districts of Bangladesh. A multinomial logit model was applied to analyze determinants of adaptation strategies of rice farmers. The results reveal that flood is the main risk to vulnerability, followed by cyclones and storms surges and saline intrusion. The main adaptation strategies are cultivating flood and salinity tolerant rice varieties, direct seeding of rice, supplementary irrigation, cultivation of non-rice crops that have shorter growth duration, and rearing of livestock, poultry, and duck. The econometric analysis shows that factors such as household head's education, household income, farm size, access to information, and extension services significantly influence the choice of adaptation strategies of the rice farmers. We recommend to increase investment in research, training of farmers, and targeted extension services to disseminate climate-smart technologies and information for minimising vulnerability of the farmers.

KEYWORDS:

• Bangladesh
• rice farmer
• climate change
• vulnerability
• adaptation
• coastal region

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the partial funding support of the National Science and Technology (NST) Fellowship, Bangladesh, and Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF) for this study.