Socio-Economic Determinants for Adoption of Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change and Variability among Smallholder Farmers in Igambang’ombe, Sub-County, Kenya

ABSTRACT


INTRODUCTION
Climate change and variability have been identified as a major global challenge to the development of communities, thus requiring great attention (IPCC, 2014) The United Nations identified climate as a key causal factor affecting food security globally with agricultural production being most vulnerable both locally, and globally (UN, 2007, IPCC, 2001).Various socio-economic, demographic, political, institutional, and policy trends have been noted to limit the abilities of smallholder farmers to adapt to climatic variations (Rosenzweig & Hillel, 2000).Adger et al. (2003) indicated that future climate change adaptation will be a function of an individuals' capacity, that is, that of the smallholder farmers, their social networks, and the state; and nations from which these individual farmers hail from.This calls for progressive and deliberate enhancement of the smallholder farmer's resilience and capacity to cope and adapt to climate change by all stakeholders of adaptation.Kerandi and Omotosho (2008) identified farmer knowledge enhancement, for example, on the rainfall onset dates and the length of the growing season as one of the capacities that farmers need.They argued that this would go a long way in enabling farmers to make timely decisions on-farm operations thereby helping mitigate the effect of climate change on the adaptation of crop production.According to Camberlin and Okoola (2003), this knowledge is key in the determination of the tactics farmers will employ in adapting to the varying and unpredictable climate scenarios (Hawkind et al., 2022).Kandji and Mackensen (2006) proposed that policymakers themselves and other agencies that assist farmers need to be adequately informed of the specific local farmer circumstances that influence decision-making in climate change adaptation.Reliable information has to be generated from time to time to inform these decisionmakers and agencies which empower the communities towards adaptation.They need to specifically determine the drivers of adaptation in each local scenario these will go a long way in helping them face the uncertainties posed by drought and other climate threats ( Sharafin et al., 2021).In response to the experienced and perceived impacts of climate change and variability, the Kenya Government enacted a Climate Change law (GoK, 2010).In the application of the Act, it was envisioned that the actions or response to the impacts of climate change were to be translated into decisions and development plans, and implementation strategies.This included building resilience and enhancing the adaptive capacity of the Kenyan people.As a result, the National Government and other development agencies have initiated support programs aimed at strengthening the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in semi-arid Kenya.

Statement of the Problem
Climate change and variability affects agricultural productivity, and is a major cause of food insecurity and loss of livelihoods in Kenya.The National Government and other development agencies efforts have initiated support programs aimed at strengthening the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers programs which include demand-driven extension services, provision of drought-tolerant crop cultivars, and dissemination of climate forecasts, input subsidies, and provision of farm implements among others Despite these efforts, farmers in Igambang'ombe Sub-County continue to experience low farm productivity, remain food insecure, relatively poor, and vulnerable to climate variability.This situation pointing at a possibility of a disconnection between the smallholder farmer's knowledge on how to adapt to a varying climate and the decisions they make at the farm-level.Against this background, the study sought to determine socioeconomic factors; that influence the adoption of adaptation strategies of climate change and variability in Igambang'ombe sub-County.Study findings will inform the smallholder farmer, policymakers and other agricultural stakeholders on what to consider for improved uptake of adaptation strategies to climate change and variability thereby improving the farm incomes and livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Objectives
The specific objectives of the study were to determine the social-economic factors of the smallholder farmers that influences the adoption of adaptation strategies to climate change and variability in Igambang'ombe Sub-County, Kenya.

LITERATURE REVIEW Overview of Socio-economic Factors Affecting Adaptation to Climate Change
The social and economic factors that are most likely to influence or affect the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies include; demographic factors as household head gender, age, the farming experience, level of education, household type, income, and size of the household.Other factors that support social economic systems for adoption of adaptation to climate change strategies include access to markets and market linkages, agricultural and climate extension services, financial support in form of credits, subsidies and, remittances.

Social Factors
While investigating the adaptation of climate change in the light of the social factors of communities, Adler et al., (2005) point out that the social construction of the adaptive capacity of the smallholder farmers is very important when thinking about the risks and impacts of a varying climate.Furthermore, Adler et al., (2005) asserted that the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers at a local scale is constrained by large-scale social processes operating within the community.In addition, the researchers observed that it will not only depend on access to physical resources within the community, which allow a crop to be grown successfully but also the social factors that operate at a very local scale.These factors include access to decision-making and the structure of the social fabric and relationships within a community.Besides, it is not just the change in climate which will affect vulnerability and livelihoods, but the way that these changes are negotiated through complex social systems.Due to these social complexities in dealing with the impacts of climate change, gender has become a concern for mainstreaming, in every policy, legal, and development projects of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 2010).Researchers have observed that major sources of variation in the adaptive capacity, is the level of education and gender of individual smallholder farmers (Fischer and Qaim, 2012).Furthermore, the researchers observed that in some countries as Kenya women make a significant contribution to agricultural systems yet their main domain as allowed by culture is subsistence crop production; any commercial production remains the man's domain.As a result, women have limited access to production resources.These generally affect their ability to make decisions and adapt to climate change and variability.In other some cultures, women are denied education for reproductive reasons, which adversely affects their ability to contribute to climate change and variability adaptation agenda at both the household and community level.Since women have very little exposure to the world outside their scope of knowledge and training; they tend rather be restrained by their cultural beliefs handed down through the ages.While reviewing ways of improving women's access to extension services, Jiggins, (1989) noted that educated female farmers, (was the same for males) tend to be more willing to take up technologies than uneducated ones, hence less vulnerable to climate changes.With examples from communities in Zimbabwe, Brown et al., (2012) noted that gender considerations also affected technology uptake.They found that women had more constrained access to credit than men, which resulted in the men being more willing to adopt high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of maize (which required high capital investments and fertilizers) than their women counterparts who culturally have no access to resources.Getting women to adopt these HYVs required additional interventions, as getting access to some form of a credit to make them afford these crop varieties.The dynamics of these social characteristics are complex and require investigation so that meaningful interventions by relevant stakeholders can be instituted which assist the communities to adapt to climate change and variability through technology adoption.According to Otzelberger, (2011) gender needs, time use, roles, and poverty greatly influence adaptation; the way each gender is affected by and negotiate the climate change and variability vary with time and space.Globally, 70% of the people living below the poverty line are women, which is a major contributing factor to their vulnerability to climate change and variability, especially the adverse ones, (Dankelman et al., 2008).A study carried out in Kenya by MET scientists revealed that a farmers' level of education and access to climate information are two major factors that determine whether climate change and variability adaptation strategies would be adopted by smallholder farmers (Masieyi et al., 2012).A new social dynamic to community transformation in response to climate variability has also emerged according to Masika, (2016); this is the individual mindset of a farmer on who is responsible to get him out of the threats of a variable climate.Furthermore, according to Masika, ( 2016) where communities look outwards to donors, nothing changes.He argues that where each farmer takes responsibility, by the change of mindset, utilizes individual capacities and available resources, adaptation technologies are adopted without a struggle.The researcher in this study endeavoured to investigate whether farmers in Igambang'ombe have taken their role to deal with negative climate impacts.While Kenyan smallholder farmers have no alternative but to adapt to climate change and variability, the social barriers have been limiting.With the costs of future adaptation not yet fully understood, and these social barriers need to be overcome first if any meaningful adoption of technologies is to occur among the smallholder farmers (Karanja, 2006)

Economic Factors Farm Revenue
The vulnerability of communities to climate change is generally influenced also by their economic status which is responsive to the location of where the community lives (Mendelsohn et al., 2006).In their survey in 11 African countries, Mendelsohn et al.,(2006) further observed that net farm revenues from dry-land crop production dwindled with decreasing of seasonal precipitation in rain-fed agriculture noting that food crops are also cash crops in ASALs.This assertion was also made by IPCC (2000) admitting that developing countries; especially those in the tropics are most vulnerable, and likely to be hit hard by climate change than the developed ones; and again, that the ASALs are more vulnerable to drought events, affected more by poverty and have a low adaptive capacity due to lack of sustainable livelihoods.This is because this situation affects the macro-scale economic processes, on the price received for the crops grown, which is normally lower than they should, translating into low household incomes leading to cyclic poverty.

Cost of Production
To a great extent the cost of production especially labour and input costs, farm, and family size determine whether adaptation strategies will be adopted.These form a range of the many considerations for the family's resources allocation, among many qualifying uses.Family welfare is considered the priority for resource allocation while investment and other needs get the remainder and the bigger the family the more resources it absorbs.

Income Diversification
According to Kelly and Adger (2000), four priority areas for action to improve this kind of economic situation will need to be focused: poverty reduction through engaging in meaningful livelihoods; risk-spreading through income diversification; respecting common property management rights; and promoting collective security.Schneider et al., (2007) noted that the household income levels determined how farming communities adapt since the cost of each technology for adaptation has to be factored in.In light of this observation, therefore, the study assessed the various sources of income, both on-and off-farm sources for the smallholder farmers of Igambang'ombe.For this to happen IPCC, (2000), suggests that for a sustainable response to climate change and variability adaptation to be obtained, underlying causes of social vulnerability, including the inequitable distribution of resources need to be addressed in the adaptation.The study endeavoured to find how available resources were allocated to the adaptation activities, while other needs were competing for the same.An observation by Adger et al., (2005) indicated that adaptations at one scale can create externalities, and at another reduce the adaptive capacity of other actors, often in the light of broad cost-benefit analysis.Schneider et al., (2007) while highlighting the challenges of climate change, a global assessment, admits that economic trends as the GDP and national trade levels, influence the level of climate change and variability adaptation by communities at the household level.The findings will be useful to any government agency or partner that would want to assist theses farmers in improving their adoption of climate change and variability adaptation strategies.ICRISAT, (2007) suggests given that these communities urgently require to have their adaptive capacity enhanced sustainably, and should be a continuous process.For this to happen, Kandji and Mackensen (2006) proposes that policymakers themselves and other agencies that assist farmers, need to be adequately informed of the locationspecific, farmer circumstances that influence their decision to adopt or not climate change and variability adaptation strategies available to them.This study, therefore, is proposed to provide part of that information which can be used by farmers and agriculture stakeholders; firstly, to determine the economic status of the smallholder farmers in question and secondly the adaptation technology costs that need be factored in the adaptation agenda for these farmers to adopt the technologies sustainably.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study adopted a descriptive research design which involved a household survey and interviews (Kothari, 2012).Through systematic random sampling, 100 farmer households were sampled from a total of 7,139 households from Igambang'ombe Sub-County.Closed and open-ended questionnaires were used in this study; to collect both qualitative and quantitative data from the field.

Socio-Economic Factors That Influence Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability
The results in this section highlight the various socioeconomic factors, of the smallholder farmer that influence climate change and variability adaptation strategies.These include; Gender, Age, Education, farming experience, household size, income and re-investment, access to credit, access to subsidy and remittances, market linkages, land size and use, Access to extension.

Gender and Age of Household Head
The findings in table 1 showed that (84%) of households was male-headed and (16%) were female headed.On exploring the age distribution, it was observed that 72% of the farmers were over 39 years and youthful farmers were only 28%.Of the over 39 years 61% were males and 11% were females.Abdul-razak et al., (2017), noted in Ghana, that the adaptive capacity of farming communities was influenced by social factors like age and education, with Muthoni & Wangui, (2015) on women and climate change, pointed out that the use of climate information in Tanzania varied between men and women, with the women requiring and using the information more to alleviate food insecurity.

Farmers Education Level
The results showed that 58% of the farmers had primary level education and below of which 42% were males.Of the remaining, 35% had secondary and 7% with tertiary education level with 30% and 6% males, respectively (Figure 1).This

Household Head Farming Experience
The results of the study indicated that 54 % of the household heads had a farming experience of 21-50 years.Out of the remaining 46%, 17% had a farming experience of 1-5 years (Figure 2).Generally, the more the experience, the higher the chances of good performance, but in farming, smallholders tend to be antagonized by experience and are not able to free themselves from it; to embrace new ideas and technologies.Ainembabazi et al., (2015) admitted that indeed there is a positive relationship between the adoption of agricultural technologies and the farming experience of a farmer.Nevertheless, Ainembabazi et al., (2015) further observed that the relationship is convex, in that, it influences adoption during the early stages of adoption, up to and until the time when the farmers perceive the usefulness of technology, after which it starts to decrease.This happens until skill retraining on the technology is done.Hence extension training becomes an accelerator of technology adoption.

Farmer Response on Household Size
Table 2 shows the household sizes of the smallholder farmers in the study area.The majority, (87%), had 3-10 members.Out of these, 46% had 3-5 members, and 41%, 6-10 members.There is a possibility that a large family strains household resources and limits climate change adaptation activities.A study by Oyekale and Oladale, (2012) in Ghana observed that larger households adapt more; taking into account that the household members provide labour for adaptation activities.This agrees with Ali & Erenstein, (2017) who observed that there was a positive association between the adoption of technologies regarding crop or variety choice, adjusting of planting date with socioeconomic factors as household or family size, and wealth.

Annual Household Income and Re-investment for Adaptation Activities
Table 3 shows the estimated annual income and the corresponding re-investment into adaptation activities of the respondents.It showed that 77% of the households earned less than KES 101, 000 annually, and only 63% of them re-invested up to KES 10,000 back to the farm for adaptation activities.Generally and in practical terms, if there was to be an improvement in climate change adaptation among smallholder farmers, they need to invest more of their income in climate change adaptation strategies and activities than is currently observed.Macharia ( 2009) observed that in Meru South, low farm income was a major constraint in the implementation of soil and water conservation among smallholder farmers growing coffee.Oyekale & Oladele, (2012) in their study Ghana showed that household incomes were related positively with adaptation; where households with high incomes were likely to re-invest to adaptation than those with low ones.Thus, the low farm income and reinvestment among smallholder farmers are likely to limit the adaptation strategies of climate variability and change.
Observation of low income and re-investment among Igambang'ombe farmers was reported in the National Bureau of Statistics Census of 2009 report on the poverty level index, as noted in Tharaka Nithi (CIDP), 2013 where the poverty index for Igambang'ombe was estimated at 50% high.The study sought to determine whether respondents engaged in any off-farm activity for income diversification.Figure 9 shows the result were as follows the off-farm sources of income that they were engaged in 54% of the respondents did not engage in any offfarm livelihoods, 19% owned businesses, 6% engaged in the sale of handicraft and 6% in firewood sale, 1% got pension remittances and 7% were employed hence drew a salary.The findings of the study confirmed that farmers look for alternative livelihoods out of the farm when their cropping business is threatened by climate change and variability.Agricultural productivity in the tropics is equated to the reduction of crop yield, resulting in loss or reduction of household incomes and livelihoods (Fischer et al., 2004 andTubiello, 2014).This explains the reason why household have off-farm activities and low re-investment to adaptation activities.

Access to Credit and Farm Subsidies
The study sought to determine whether farmers had access to credit facilities for any agricultural activities; 72% said yes while 28% said no (Figure 10).The main sources of credit were farmers groups (51%), farmers' SACCO ((35%) commercial banks (10%), and National Government (5%) as shown in Table 4.

Access to Farm Subsidies
The study sought to determine whether farmers had access to agricultural subsidies; 67% said yes while 33% said no (Figure 3).The study also established that farmers obtained the subsidies as follows; 30% said from GoK (National Government), 21% said from local NGO (One operating only in Tharaka Nithi), 11% said from other foreign NGOs while 10% said from COTN (County Government).The results of the study agree with Kurukulasuriya & Rosenthal, (2003) who argued that for households to reduce their vulnerability and increase their adaptive capacity, they need to source for farming loans from commercial entities and input subsidies.
The subsidies obtained by farmers included fertilizers by 57%, seeds by 52%, farm implements storage by 26% and farm storage structure by 12% as shown in (Figure 4).

Access to Remittances
The study sought to determine whether farmers received remittances from friends or relatives to finance farm activities.The results show that farmers received remittances from relatives and friends, as follows; 58% said no and 42% yes Figure 5. Out of the 42 % who received remittances 53% used the remitted cash for other purposes other than farm-oriented ones, 24% was to buy seed, 12% said for buying fertilizer, 7% said for ploughing and 4% said for pesticides purchase as shown in Table 6.Like subsidies, remittances are a social system where vulnerable communities living in the rural areas are supported by their relations earning their living in the urban areas, thereby enhancing them to be resilient to adverse climatic variation and change.
farming.In agreement with this observation, most households (61%) in Igambang'ombe have allocated land to crop and grazing, evidence that the people here are agro-pastoralists.The findings further corroborate with those of Ali & Erenstein, (2017) who observed that land size and use is positively associated with croprelated adaptation technologies adopted by farmers.Ali & Erenstein, (2017) observed that those with larger land size and committed to crop production are more likely to be keen on choosing crop types and varieties that are adapted to the climate.The guiding factor of these choices being tolerance to prevailing weather conditions, diseases and pests, and easily try out new crops; to get returns to their land investment and use.

Household Land Size and Use
The results of the study showed that 97% of the households owned land of 10 acres and below (Table 16).On land use, 62% of the farmers allocated their land to crop farming, while 61% had allocated some land to grazing and 42% allocated land to forest.This agrees with findings by Cecchi (2010) that, households in mixed arid and semi-arid environments of Eastern Africa practiced pastoral, agro-pastoral, and mixed

Access to Extension Services
Table 8 shows responses on the access to and frequency of extension services, where 81% of the respondents indicated that they had access to extension service (Figure 6).Out of the total, 69% indicated that they received it weekly or fortnightly.A review on the impacts of climate change to agriculture acknowledged that the type, and the availability or access to both appropriate technology and extension service, are major drivers, and are factors of agricultural productivity (Kurukulasuriya, 2003).This concurred with Haregeweyn et al., (2015) that relevant stakeholder support services, to smallholder farmers is necessary for meaningful climate change and variability adaptation process in agriculture.It was also observed from the results that, the training by extension agents, focused mainly on energy saving, conservation agriculture (CA), and soil and water conservation technologies.Kimaro et al., (2014) identified CA as a technology that would greatly increase agricultural productivity in fragile ecosystems as ASALs, and as earlier realized in this study, it is being practiced by a few farmers and may require scaling up for its impacts to be substantial in Igambang'ombe.
The study sought to determine the main crops that farmers grew for com¬mercial purposes to earn income.The results were as follows; the combination of millet, green grams, and cowpeas was grown by 40% of the farmers, green grams, pigeon peas, and maize is grown by 23% of farmers and cowpeas, green grams, and sorghum by 21% and maize, bananas and mangoes combination by 16% of the farmers as shown in Figure 15.Food crops in Igambang'ombe were the main cash crops and hence the main source of household income.Besides, the study sought to determine where the farmers sell their produce and the results were as follows; 92% internally within the county while 8% export outside the county.On who links the farmers to markets, 95% indicated that they were linked by government agencies and 5% by the private sector as shown in Table 9.

Correlation between Adaptation Strategies and Socio-Economic Factors of the Farmer
In the correlation analysis, the study focused on the relationship between the independent variables; gender, household size and income, farm size, age, education, farming experience, and the climate change adaptation strategies; dependent variables that include: land preparation methods and use, weather forecasting and information access, soil and water management as mulching and terracing), and crop enterprise diversification for drought and disease-pest resistance and/or tolerance.From the correlation analysis, the most important socio-economic factors significantly associated with the adoption of climate change strategies included age, education, and farming of the household head.Other factors with a significant association with the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies were found to be access to extension and frequency, access to farm subsidy, and credit (Valizadeh et al., 2022).On the contrary, education however influenced significantly but negatively in weather forecasting probably due to the prevailing low literacy levels, with 58% being the primary level and below.

CONCLUSION
can potentially undermine climate change adaptation training.According to Nhemachena & Hassan, (2007), educated farmers were more likely to adopt technologies than uneducated ones.This is because they understand better the implications of climate variability and change and also easily learned new skills.In the case of Igambang'ombe, few farmers are likely to benefit or have the capacity to utilize climate change training due to the prevalent low level of education.The concern for the low level of education has also been raised by the County Government of Tharaka Nithi as indicated in the integrated development plan CIDP (TNC, 2018).The County plan report estimated the population with no formal education at 17%, with the majority found in Tharaka South and North Sub-Counties.Figure 7 displays the level of education of the farmers per gender.

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Access to Subsidies

Figure 6 :
Figure 6: Type of Subsidies Accessed by Farmers

Figure 8 :
Figure 8: Access to Extension Service Agricultural markets and terms of trade are often affected by this climate variability; according to Kurukulasuriya & Rosenthal, (2003), how agricultural markets interact with climate variability should concern researchers and policymakers.The results agreed with (Ketiem et al., 2007) that market availability and activity are a part of climate change adaptation in that they become an assurance for steady household incomes thereby improving the resilience of otherwise vulnerable communities living in the ASALs areas.

Figure 9 :
Figure 9: Percent Responses on Three Main Crops Linked to Markets It was concluded that in Igambang'ombe, the socioeconomic factors affecting the adoption of climate change adaptation strategies included the age of the household head (HH), which was a key determinant of the adoption of SWC strategies and on weather and climate forecasting access To 2-3 days forecasting.The latter being also affected by education level, and farming experience.On the other hand access to 2-3 months forecast was influenced by HH education, farming experience, and household farm size.This study revealed that farmer training through extension service played a key role in influencing the adoption of climate change and variability adaptation strategies.The training of farmers in the Igambang'ombe Sub-County should be cognizant of the existing household and farmer demographic characteristics and should be frequent and well-structured to meet specific identified farmer needs.The credit and subsidy services from stakeholders also contributed greatly in supporting the adoption and the adaptation of climate change and variability and hence should be enhanced.

Table 1 :
The Farmer's Age per Gender

Table 2 :
The Household's Family size

Table 3 :
Farmer Response on Annual Household Income and Re-investment to Adaptation Activities in KES

Table 4 :
Farmer response on Source of Credit

Table 5 :
Farmer response on Source of Subsidies

Table 7 :
Farmer Response on Household Land Size and Use

Table 6 :
Access and Frequency of Extension Services by Farmers