A living and responding to climatic stresses: a case of Hanang’ District, Tanzania

This study assessed the response strategies of smallholder farmers towards living and responding to climatic stresses in Gocho and Dawar Villages of Hanang’ District in Manyara region. It focused on assessment of extreme climatic events and trends for the past 30 years through community experiences including climatological records, examined perception and response strategies used by smallholder farmers to climatic stress. The study involved 110 respondents that included 80 randomly selected smallholder farmers. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using key informant interviews, household surveys, focus group discussions (FGDs) and field observations. Climate data was collected from Tanzania Meteorological Authority. Quantitative data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Rainfall and temperature trends were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and the significance of the trends determined using Mann-Kendall and CUSUM analysis. Qualitative data were exposed to content analysis. Farmers indicated perceptions of variations in climate over time including 78% who revealed decreased rainfall amounts and changed onset, 94% increased temperature and 6% revealed that both precipitation and temperature have changed. Farmers disclosed that droughts and floods are major climatic stresses in the area; and this was substantiated by observed increasing and decreasing temperature and rainfall trends respectively. Findings showed that farmers have developed response strategies to climatic stresses, including crop diversification, planting new and drought resistant crop varieties, use of fertilizers, migration to other places, abandoning cultivation of some crops and shifting to short cycle crops. Smallholder farmers in Hanang’ District respond to climatic stresses using transformative as well as incremental responses, but they were inadequate and farmers still faced challenges. The study concludes that smallholder farmers are susceptible to climatic stresses since they depend on rain-fed agriculture with moderate ability to respond. It is recommended that, in order to strengthen their response strategies, training on indigenous knowledge of weather forecasting and improvement of the traditional means of land and environmental conservation as well as increased research concerning soil and different kinds of crops in different agro-ecological zones.