Differentiating rice farmers’ vulnerability to climate change and adaptability in Bangladesh

In the face of frequent and severe vulnerability to climate change, and extreme weather events, rice yield loss has become a burning issue to consider, particularly for developing countries which are the largest rice producers and consumers at the same time. Rice is the mainstay of Bangladesh economy and also is the staple diet for people in the country. Due to increasing change in the pattern of temperature and rainfall, farmers are exposed to both environmental hazards like droughts and floods and also livelihood shocks. However, to combat yield loss farmers adapted to short-term farming strategies which are time and location in-variant. But in vulnerability scholarship it is argued that farmers‘ vulnerability to environmental stress is disaster and individual specific. Likewise, adaptive capacity of farmers is determined by their access to socio-demographic, economic, institutional, knowledge, political resources. This study therefore explores spatial patterns in temperature and rainfall variability which so far have received less attention in the context of Bangladesh. The study also examines whether there is any differentiation across farmers in making adaptation choices and productivity. This study uses monthly time series data of maximum temperature, minimum temperature and rainfall for the period 1964-2012 to analyse trend, seasonality and their variability. Survey based farm level secondary data for the production year 2011-2012 have also been employed to gauge farmers‘ perception about temperature and rainfall change and to assess the effect of household characteristics on the choice of adaptations and land productivity of rice. The study found larger variability in rainfall compared to temperature. Maximum temperature exhibits more increasing trend while rainfall has a more decreasing trend in Rajshahi compared to two other weather stations namely Bogra and Ishurdi. Farmers perceived a gradual increase in temperature and decrease in rainfall both annually and seasonally. Therefore, farmer perception is consistent with national weather variability analysis. Household head‘s age, education and access to agricultural credit, subsidy and electricity for irrigation have statistically significant effect on different adaptation choices and land productivity. However, lack of climate information has appeared as a major adaptation barrier. The negative effect of drought severity and the positive effect of groundwater depletion on land productivity imply more irrigation and consequently increased water stress. Differential land productivity and choice of adaptation strategies across farmers have been observed: probability of choosing water saving non-rice and horticulture crop cultivation is the highest in drought prone areas and also among large or medium farmers in this study. As all farmers extensively used irrigation in rice cultivation, farmer type has no effect on the choice of more irrigation. The findings coupled with vulnerability analysis and existing literature suggest that though scientific research driven adaptation strategies could increase land productivity, it is required to assess pre-existing socio-economic, institutional and knowledge based resource access of farmers in formulating short term adaptation policies. However, in the long run, strong monitoring of agricultural support provisions, farming related education and training, timely & adequate climate information are important in raising land productivity as well as reducing disparities among farmers.