Climate change adaptation strategies and production efficiency: The case of citrus farmers in the Limpopo province, South Africa

Jàmbá

Theresa T Rubhara¹  Michael A. Antwi²  Clarietta Chagwiza²  Samuel Joseph² 

[1] Department of Agriculture and Animal Health, Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Johannesburg,;Department of Agriculture and Animal Health, Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, Johannesburg;

关键词: climate change;    adaptation strategies;    stochastic frontier production function;    profit efficiency;    technical efficiency.;   

DOI  :  10.4102/jamba.v13i1.1093

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Climate change adaptation policies and strategies have inevitably become an integral component of agricultural production on a global scale. The evaluative extent to which these adaptation techniques have influenced agricultural productivity is inherently exiguous. Citrus production in tropical regions such as South Africa, is more vulnerable to climate change as the region already experience hot and dry climate, hence the need to implement different strategies for climate change adaption in these regions. This study was designed to assess the effect of adopting the following climate change adaptation measures: planting drought resistant varieties, rainwater harvesting, planting early maturing varieties, integrated pest management (IPM) , changing fertiliser type, and applying drip irrigation to manage climate challenges on the production efficiency of citrus farmers in the Limpopo province of South Africa. The stochastic frontier production function with Cobb Douglas production functional form was used to analyse the productivity of farmers’ vis-à-vis adopted climate change strategies. A survey was conducted and data were collected through a semi-structured questionnaire administered to respondents from 235 production units in the five district municipalities of Limpopo. The likelihood ratio tests for profit models showed that farmers were profit efficient considering the identified adaptation strategies. The variables that influenced profit efficiency was price of fertiliser (p0.010) and water cost (p0.010). The inefficiency model showed that besides changing fertiliser as an adaptation measure, the other adaptation strategies including IPM, water harvesting and planting drought resistant varieties did not change the profit efficiency of farmers. Therefore, the results indicate that citrus farmers can still adapt to climate change and remain profit efficient.

【 授权许可】

Unknown