KERALA AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE, VELLAYANI

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION

FARMERS’ PERCEPTION ON CLIMATE VARIABILITY: DIMENSIONS AND

DETERMINANTS
Varna Murali- Ph.D. Scholar, KAU
Dr. Allan Thomas, Professor, KAU- Kerala
INTRODUCTION
Agriculture is vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate variability and change.
Various news reports over the globe from the past few years show that there is a significant
increase in temperature, frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, floods
and intense cyclonic activities. It is undeniable that human activity has warmed the
atmosphere, oceans, and land. There have been widespread and rapid changes in the
atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere (IPCC, 2021). India and Kerala in particular is
also vulnerable to climate change and variability. India is highly vulnerable due to its high
physical exposure to climate-related disasters (65% is drought-prone, 12% is flood prone, and
8% is vulnerable to cyclones), and the country's economy and population rely on climate-
sensitive sectors such as agriculture, forests, tourism, and fisheries (DoECC, 2014).
The state of Kerala is also extremely sensitive to natural disasters and climate
variabilities due to its location along the seacoast and steep gradient over the slopes of the
Western Ghats (UNDP, 2018). One or the other forms of climate related disasters are
frequently happening in Kerala. The impact of climate variability or changes is direct and
first affects the life of farmers (Soubry et al., 2020). Because farmers are increasingly
perceiving and experiencing impacts of climate variability it is critical to comprehend both
how farmers perceive diverse climatic variabilities and how these perceptions influence their
strategy selection and ultimately, their ability to adapt (Funk et al., 2020).
CONCEPTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND PERCEPTION
CLIMATE
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO, n.d.), climate describes
the average weather conditions for a particular location and over a long period of time.
VARIABILITY
Variability describes how far apart data points lie from each other and from the center
of a distribution (Bhandari, 2020).
CLIMATE VARIABILITY
Climate variability refers to variations in the mean state and other statistics (such as
standard deviations, the occurrence of extremes, etc.) of the climate on all spatial and
temporal scales beyond that of individual weather events. Variability may be due to natural
internal processes within the climate system (internal variability), or to variations in natural
or anthropogenic external forcing (external variability) (IPCC, 2018).
Understanding changes in climate variability and climate extremes is made difficult
by interactions between the changes in the mean and variability. Such interactions vary from
variable to variable depending on their statistical distribution. Other combinations of changes
in both mean and variability would lead to different results (Folland et al., 2001).
CLIMATE CHANGE VS CLIMATE VARIABILITY
Climate change is the long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns (UN, n.
d.). Whereas, climate variability is the differences in monthly, seasonal and annual values
from that of expected or the average. Climate change is observed for an extended period of
time (decades to millions of years) while climate variability is the short-term variations. From
January-September 2022, Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) was 1.15 ± 0.13 °C
warmer than the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900) (WMO, 2022); this is an example of
climate change. Climate variability is the way aspects of weather differ from an average. For
example, the average daily maximum temperature in July averaged over 30 years from 1988
through 2017 in Boulder, Colorado was 30.9°C. However, in some years the month of July
has been warmer than the average. In other years, the month of July is cooler than the average
(UCAR Center for Science Education, n. d.).
PERCEPTION
Perception is a process whereby an individual receives stimuli through the various
senses and interprets them (Kollat et al., 1970). Van den Ban and Hawkins (1998) defined
perception as the process through which our senses organize and interpret information
received in order to form an understanding of the environment. Nwakile et al. (2020) narrated
perception as an act of being conscious of one’s surroundings through sensory experiences,
and it indicates a person’s ability to understand. The Cambridge Dictionary describes the
meaning of perception as “a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on how
things seem”.
DIMENSIONS OF PERCEPTION
A suitable framework for explaining farmers’ perception on climate variability is
found to be the AMR framework proposed by Malle (2019). The AMR framework proposes
three dimensions of perception viz., Affect (A), Moral and Mental Regulation (M), and Reality
Interaction (R). Dimension A combines unintentional components of physiological and emotional
capacities. M encompasses components of moral cognition as well as social cognition, which
involves the modeling of one's own and other people's minds. R depicts the dynamic shift
from perception and cognition to communication and action through learning. Some other
dimensions of perception are awareness, beliefs, causes, conceptual understanding,
experiences, agency and consequences (Dennett, 1996; Madhuri and Sharma, 2020; van
Valkengoed et al., 2021).
FARMERS’ PERCEPTION ON CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND ITS IMPACTS
In India, the temperature of the warmest day has risen by 0.63°C while that of the
coldest night has risen by 0.4°C and there has been a decline in summer monsoon
precipitation by 6% (MoES, 2020). Whereas in Kerala, there has been an increase in
maximum temperature ranging from 0.43°C to 1.92°C and minimum temperature showed an
increase of 0.66°C to 2.17°C. Rainfall was reported to have an increase over the normal with
skewed intensity and spread (CWRDM, 2019). These changes and variabilities impact our
agriculture sector in terms of yield losses that impacted our food security, its consequences
on our economy, make farmers in distress and increase farmers’ debt burden. It is to these
impacts farmers developed their perception resulting in their behaviour either exhibited as
pro-active behaviour or reactive behaviour.
DETERMINANTS OF FARMERS' PERCEPTION ON CLIMATE VARIABILITY
Farmers generally develop perception on changes and variations in various
climatic parameters like temperature patterns, precipitation patterns, climate extremes and
other meteorological variables like changes in wind speed (Ayal and Filho, 2017; Jha and
Gupta, 2021; Datta et al., 2022). Farmers who work closely with agricultural fields have a
better perception on climate variability. Many studies (Tesfahunegn et al., 2016, Jha and
Gupta, 2021; Mairura et al., 2021 ) have found that identifying and assessing elements that
influence farmers' perceptions of climate change is an important step in developing,
transferring, and adopting appropriate technologies. Various studies (Tesfahunegn et al.
2016; Ansari et al., 2018; Mairura et al., 2021) reported that the socio-economic profile of
the farmers, institutional factors, various environmental and biophysical factors and farm
attributes are the core determinants that influence farmers’ perception on climate variability.
CONCLUSION
Climate variability and the associated hardships are a major concern at global,
national and state levels. Farmers are at the forefront in terms of suffering the impacts of
climate variability and efforts to adapt to its negative impacts on food systems. Analyzing
farmers' perceptions of climate change is essential before evaluating their adoption decisions
(Jha and Gupta, 2021). Assessing farmers' perceptions of climatic variability could aid in the
development of pro-farmer climate policy, mitigation, adaptation, and sustainable agriculture
measures (Mairura et al., 2021). Adopting an integrated approach to measuring farmers'
perceptions on climate variability, as well as their effects, is essential for effective
policymaking toward food security and farmer well-being (Datta et al., 2022).
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