Climate change and livelihood outcomes of households in rice farming communities of Ebonyi and Niger states, Nigeria

Rice production responds adversely to climate change (CC) with consequences on livelihood outcomes of farming households. This study describes personal and farm enterprise characteristics, examines sources of climate information (CI), determines adaptation strategies, ascertains perceptions of CC and assesses level of livelihood outcomes. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 440 registered rice farming households. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data, analysed using mean, correlation, t-test and regression. The rice farmers mean age was 44.75 ± 11.22 years, mostly male (65.0%) and married (76.6%). In Niger, 88.3% of rice farmers obtained CI from extension agents while all (100%) did in Ebonyi. Majority (77.0%) of rice farmers in Niger and 55.7% in Ebonyi perceived CC effects on rice production as unfavourable. Adaptation to CC strategies mostly used in Niger was short duration and high yielding crops (x̅=2.35 ± 0.77), and frequent weeding of rice fields (x̅=2.58 ± 0.70) in Ebonyi. Perceived CC effects had significant relationship with food security (r = 0.639), vulnerability to poverty (r=-0.252) in Niger, and with food security (r = 0.379), vulnerability to poverty (r=-0.220), sustainable land management (r = 0.381) in Ebonyi. The major predictors of livelihood outcomes were male-headed (β = 1.470), tertiary education (β = 3.470) in Niger and secondary education (β = 0.216), information sources (β = 0.359) in Ebonyi. Conclusively, perceived CC worsened sustainable land management practices, vulnerability to poverty and food security status among rural households in both States. Dual season farming should be promoted to lessen the effect of climate change on livelihood outcomes and relevant agencies should facilitate farming households’ access to information from NIMET.