Browsing by Author "Sawe, Jackson Raymond"

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    Assessment of the potentials of mixed crop farming in adapting to the impacts of climate change and variability in Manyoni dictrict, Tanzania
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2019) Sawe, Jackson Raymond
    The main objective of the study was to assess the potentials of mixed crop farming in adapting to climate change in Manyoni district, Tanzania. The study adopted mixed research design where quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used to collect data. Data collection methods were household survey, Participatory Rural Appraisal methods such as face to face in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, direct field observation, trend analysis and documentary review. Household survey was done to 362 heads of households from four study villages namely Lusilile, Udimaa, Makanda and Magasai. Face to face in-depth interviews involved 17 key informants, focus group discussions comprised a total of 32 participants and trend analysis consisted of 32 participants. Rainfall and temperature data for Manyoni stations were collected from Tanzania Meteorological Agency while crop production data were collected from National Bureau of Statistics. Linear trends analysis was used to determine the trends of rainfall, temperature and crop production while Multinomial regression analysis was used to analyze determinants of mixed crop farming. ANOVA was used to analyse the variation among the group means of the study variables. The findings revealed that majority of the farming households were aware of climate change whereby about 80.9% of heads of households perceived that rainfall has decreased significantly while 88.7% perceived that temperature has increased, indicating their areas are increasingly becoming drier and warmer. The findings indicated that smallholder farmers have been impacted differently by climate change. The major impacts perceived by majority of the farmers were drying of crops, increased incidences of pests and diseases and persistence of low yields. In responding to these impacts, farmers generally used both household and farm level adaptation strategies. Furthermore, the study revealed that, farming households who adopted mixed crop farming were less vulnerable to climate impacts due to various potentials of mixed crop farming. These potentials included, crop insurance in unpredictable and unfavourable weather conditions, improvement of soil fertility, ensuring a variety of crop production and minimizing crop pests and diseases. Moreover, the study found that there were different determinants of farmers’ adoption of mixed crop farming, these including households and farm characteristics, village location and institutional factors. However, not all farmers’ were able to adopt mixed crop farming. Therefore, it is recommended that collective strategies to promote mixed crop farming should be implemented in order to respond to impacts of climate change. This is because mixed crop farming has been reported as the best farming option in responding to impacts of climate change.