EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION STRATEGIES ON PRODUCTION EFFICIENCY OF CHICKPEA AND LENTIL IN RAJSHAHI DISTRICT

Abstract

Adaptation assists farmers to cope with climate change by reducing adverse effect and increasing productivity of agricultural production. The study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of climate change adaptation strategies on production efficiency of selected pulse crops in Bangladesh. A total of 100(50 chickpea and 50 lentil farmers) pulse growers were selected. A multistage random sampling technique was followed to select the sample farmers. Descriptive statistics and statistical analytical tools such as multinomial logit model and stochastic frontier production function were used. The most common strategy followed in the study areas was increased insecticides or pesticides application (90%) due to climate change. Farmers also followed more doses of fertilizer application (85%), crop diversification (60%), change in land under pulse cultivation (25%), land fragmentation (3%), relay cropping (6%) and seed treatment (11%) as main adaptation strategies to climate change. Climate change awareness had positive, farm size had negative but connection to extension services had both positive and negative significant relationship with choosing and using different climate change adaptation strategies in chickpea cultivation. Education, climate change awareness and extension contact had significant positive relationship and farm size had both positive and negative significant relationship with choosing and using different climate change adaptation strategies in lentil cultivation. Seed had negative and other agrochemicals had positive and significant effect on the yield of both pulses. Average technical efficiency of the farmers was 0.83 and 0.82 for chickpea and lentil respectively implies that there is a scope of increasing productivity of chickpea and lentil by 17% and 18% respectively using current level of inputs only by increasing the farmers’ efficiency. Adaptation strategy multiple planting dates had positive and significant effect on technical inefficiency of chickpea growers. Pulse production efficiency can be increased by eliminating the constraints to adopt climate change adaptation strategies.