Social networks of agricultural stakeholders on climate-smart agriculture in Meghalaya: a structural equation modelling
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Date
2017-12
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College of Post Graduate Studies in Agricultural Sciences, CAU-Imphal, Umiam
Abstract
Climate change has already significantly impacted agriculture and is expected to further impact directly and indirectly food production. Agriculture however is not just a victim of climate change; it is directly responsible for 10–12% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, to increase agricultural production without further increasing greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities, ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA) has been introduced. The scaling up of CSA practices will require appropriate institutional and governance mechanisms and understanding of individual behavioral intention to adopt CSA, to disseminate information, ensure broad participation and harmonize policies. Therefore, considering the above facts, the present study was conceptualized with the following objectives: (1) To identify social networks of agricultural stakeholders on performing climate-smart agriculture. (2) To analyze the mitigative and adaptive competency of identified social networks apropos of climate-smart agriculture. (3) To develop a structural equation model fitting climate-smart hill agriculture. (4) To advocate strategies on successful implementation of the recommendations on climate-smart hill agriculture.
The hill state, Meghalaya, in which the three agro-climatic zones (ACZs) of the state were, selected purposively. Out of which one most agriculturally vulnerable Community and Rural Development (C&RD) block to climate change was selected from each ACZs. Following snowball sampling, ‘n’ agricultural stakeholders were identified and a cluster of 4 villages from each classified CRDB were selected. 180 farmers were randomly selected from the respective CRDB.
In the Tropical ACZ, five stakeholders involved in climate change were identified of which NGOs were found to be the key stakeholder while in Sub-tropical and Temperate ACZ, thirteen stakeholders and eleven stakeholder were identified in which ICAR(NICRA) and DoP&ED, GoM were found to be the most important stakeholder in the ACZs respectively. On analyzing the social network of the stakeholders, Farmers in Tropical ACZ, GIZ in Sub-tropical ACZ and both Farmers and GIZ in Temperate zone were found to be the central actors in the network. DoA, GoM & KVK and m4agriNEI of CoHSc, Tura & NGOs were found to be structurally equivalent in Temperate ACZ while no structural equivalence was found between the stakeholders in Sub-tropical and Temperate ACZ. The cohesive density of farmers was found to highest in Tropical ACZ followed by in Sub-tropical and Temperate ACZ. No significant difference was found on the mitigative and adaptative competency level of the identified social networks of agricultural stakeholders in all the three ACZs.Using multinomial logistic regression, independent variables- age, landholding, social cohesiveness, cosmopoliteness, communication behaviour, subjective norms, risk perception and knowledge of CSA practices were found to significantly affect competency level of the farmers. Structural equation modeling was applied and a structural path model was developed in which exogenous variables-perceived adaptive capacity and subjective norms were found to be positively influencing CSA performance of the farmers while maladaptation was observed to have a negative influence. The major constraints expressed by the farmers were the lack of profit on adapting to CSA practices and lack of government support.