Towards a Sustainable Cocoa Farming in Ghana: Risk Perception and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies

Abstract

Climate change has remained a critical challenge to agricultural land management, threatening the lives and livelihoods of poor farming households in developing countries highly dependent on agriculture. Climate change adaptation strategies offer smallholder farmers an opportunity to mitigate this threat and sustain farming. However, adopting these technologies largely depends on farmers’ risk perception of climate change. This paper uses a composite scale measuring cocoa farmers’ risk perception about climate change and evaluates its impact on adopting climate change adaptation strategies using a sample of 512 cocoa households surveyed from the Western North Region (241) and Ashanti Region (271) of Ghana, with varying degrees of climate vulnerability. The results show that farmers had medium to high-risk perceptions about climate change. Cocoa farmers with higher climatic risk perception are more likely to adopt on-farm and off-farm climate change strategies to mitigate the effect of climate change and protect their livelihood sources. Also, farmers in regions with greater climatic shocks tend to adopt more on-farm strategies to buffer against climate change. Therefore, understanding farmers’ risk perception about climate change is vital for formulating policies to mitigate its effect on livelihoods and sustain farming as the cocoa belt faces the threat of climate change.