Farmers’ perception on climate extremes and their coping mechanism: evidences from disaster prone regions of India

Abstract

The state of Rajasthan is highly vulnerable to climatic extremes. The perception of local communities regarding climate change and their indigenous coping management strategies is important for decision-making and policy formation. In this paper, the perceptions of farmers and their coping strategies were studied using primary data collected from 180 farmers of Bikaner and Kota districts. The data were collected through personal interviews as well as focused group discussions. The findings indicated that the risk of droughts, rainfall anomalies and wind-storms increased over the decade. The people at drought-prone regions were more food insecure in comparison to flood-affected regions. However, their traditional wisdom and indigenous species like Khimp (Leptadenia pyrotechnica), Kair (Capparis decidua), Phog (Calligonum polygonoides), Khejri (Prosopis cineraria), etc. helped them in coping with climate extremes. Adjustments in the dates of sowing, deep summer ploughing in morning hours, dry sowing, increased seed rate, mixed cropping and farming; especially crop-livestock integration were common coping management strategies. Farmers perceived that with modernization of agriculture, biodiversity of the region is declining. The study suggests that local communities need to be incentivized for conserving these species. These indigenous products have high market value. Therefore, the value chains of these products need to be strengthened by providing processing equipment such as solar drier at subsidized rates.