The perception, impact and adaptation methods of farmers of rice based farming system to climate change in Banke district, Nepal

This study was carried in Banke district trying to explain about what are the likely impacts of climate change on crop production, to what extent these influence crop productivity, how people are responding to them, and what the potential roles of the local government and other development partners are in adaptation efforts in vulnerable sectors in that area. Result showed that farmers perceived the climate change as change in rainfall pattern, rainfall duration, onset of monsoon, and changes in summer and winter hotness and coldness etc. Some farmers realized the change in climate and its impact on their usual farming practices. But, majority of farmers (57.88%) still doesn’t understand about climate change and how to deal with it. Main two problems farmers facing were delayed seed bed preparation and over aged seed transplantation due to delayed rainfall. Among them 79% of them has faced increased disease and pest infestation, 93.33% of them relies on pump for certain time or yearly irrigation, 72.2% of them said to faced decreasing production of rice which resulted in increased cost of production and lowered profit. With the changing climatic pattern there were changes in cropping pattern and cropping calendar along with crop varieties. Some peoples showed different adaption practices but mainly it was change in cropping calendar