Integrated Farming Systems as an Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change: Case Studies from Diverse Agro-Climatic Zones of India

Abstract

Climate change impacts agricultural productivity and farmers’ income, integrated farming systems (IFS) provide a mechanism to cope with such impacts. The nature and extent of climatic aberrations, perceived impact, and adaptation strategies by the farmers reduce the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture. Therefore, a study was conducted to investigate 2160 IFS farmers about their perceptions of climate change, barriers, and the likelihood of adapting to the negative impacts of climate change. The study observed an increasing rainfall trend for humid (4.18 mm/year) and semi-arid (0.35 mm/year) regions, while a decreasing trend was observed in sub-humid (−2.02 mm/year) and arid (−0.20 mm/year) regions over the last 38 years. The annual rise in temperature trends observed in different ACZs varied between 0.011–0.014 °C. Nearly 79% of IFS farmers perceived an increase in temperature, decreasing rainfall, variability in the onset of monsoon, heavy terminal rains, mid-season dry spells, and frequent floods due to climate change. The arid, semi-arid, sub-humid, and humid farmers’ adapted several measures in different components with an adaption index of 50.2%, 66.6%, 83.3%, and 91.6%, respectively. The majority of the IFS farmers perceived constraints in adopting measures to climate change, such as meta barriers, capacity barriers, and water barriers. Therefore, we infer that educated farmers involved in diversified and profitable farms with small to medium landholdings are concerned more about climate change in undertaking adaptive strategies to reduce the environmental impact of climate change.