article · Food Security
Climate change presents growing risks to farm-household food security across sub-Saharan Africa. Research in Tanzania evaluated how agrarian households select adaptation practices and how these responses affect their food security status. Practised methods included early planting, growing early maturing crops, planting drought-tolerant maize varieties, income diversification, precautionary savings, and asset sales. Multiple factors influence the uptake of these adaptation measures, such as access to weather forecasts, early warning systems, past drought experiences, delayed rains, farmer demographics, farm size, livestock ownership, credit access, and contact with extension services. Overall, adopting climate change adaptation strategies improves household food security, although the measured effect was smaller for households that adapted compared to those that did not. Developing and promoting targeted adaptation practices, including drought-resistant varieties and shifted planting schedules, supports vulnerable farming households in mitigating climate risks.
Climate change increasingly threatens smallholder agriculture and household nutrition across sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding which specific adaptation measures work, and what determines whether farmers adopt them, helps agricultural programmes, advisory services, and policymakers design better support mechanisms. Strengthening access to credit, climate forecasts, and extension services enables vulnerable rural communities to maintain food security during shifting weather patterns.
The findings point to applied opportunities for seed companies, climate-information providers, and rural financial services. Providers of drought-tolerant and early maturing crop varieties, early warning weather platforms, and tailored microcredit can target smallholder farmers to boost uptake of effective practices. Because the study evaluates established agricultural practices and inputs already used by farmers, these interventions represent applied and near-market opportunities for agribusinesses and development organisations.
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The damaging effects of changing climate on farm-household food security are steadily increasing in sub-Saharan Africa. Adaptation strategies are important for agrarian households to reduce the adverse effects on their food security. This study employed multivariate probit and endogenous switching regression models to analyze the determinants of farm households' choice of climate-change adaptation strategies, such as the cultivation of early maturing crops, early planting, growing drought-tolerant maize varieties, using precautionary savings, practicing income diversification, and sale of assets, and their effects on household food security in Tanzania. Information on expected rainfall and temperatures, early warning systems, previous droughts, delays in the onset of the rainy season, sex and age of the farmer, educational level, farming experience, family size, total farmland holding, number of livestock owned, contact with extension agents, and access to credit services were all found to influence decisions by farm households to use strategies of adaptation to climate change. Overall, the adaptation of farm households to climate change increased their food security status. An analysis of "adapter" and "non-adapter" farm households showed that the effect of adaptation on food security was smaller for households that adapted than for households that did not. Thus, we recommend that further effective adaptation strategies such as planting drought-resistant crops, changing planting dates, planting early maturing crops, and practicing income diversification be developed and used, particularly for the most vulnerable farm households, to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change on their food security.
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DOI: 10.1007/s12571-023-01348-6
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