Abstract

The study was carried out to examine the perceived effect of climate change on quality preservation of planting materials and coping strategies used by arable crop farmers in Ona Ara Local Government Area of Oyo state, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 103 respondents and data were collected through a well-structured questionnaire. The data was analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (Chi-square and Pearson Product Moment Correlation). The study showed that most (66.0%) of the respondents were male, 40.4% were between 46-55 years, 63.1% were married and had secondary education (56.3%). The study also showed that most of the respondents accessed information frequently through farmers’ cooperative society (74.8%), friends and neighbors (69.9%) and farmers association (61.2%). Result further revealed that planting materials are vulnerable to adverse effect of climate change (77.7%), higher temperature causes pollen sterility (76.7%), lead to poor farm economy (70.6%) and reduce planting material weight (68.0%). The coping strategies used included timely harvesting (95.2%), timely planting of quality seeds (87.4%) and purchase of planting materials from reputable sources (58.3%). Chi square analysis revealed that secondary occupation (χ²= 18.293, p= 0.026), education (χ²= 24.450, p= 0.004) and religion (χ²= 20.901, p= 0.002) had significant relationship with coping strategy used. Also, PPMC analysis revealed that significant relationship existed between sources of information (r= 0.059, p= 0.05), knowledge (r=0.385, p=0.000) and coping strategies used. Therefore, it is recommended that farmers should be given the opportunity to build their adaptive capacity against the effect of climate change affecting planting material quality.  

Keywords: Perceived effect, Preservation, Climate change, Planting materials