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Abstract
Climate change poses major and growing threats to global food security and livelihoods. For smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) who depend mainly on agriculture for their food security and livelihoods, climate change is one of the major challenges facing the farming business. Among the main adverse climatic events facing smallholders in SSA include such as droughts, floods, rising temperature and erratic rainfall. These climatic events are uncertain both terms of occurrence and severity.
To minimize the impacts of climate change on their farms, farmers need to adapt their farm businesses by investing in climate change adaptation strategies such as climate-smart agriculture (CSA). However, given the uncertain future, in terms of the frequency and severity of adverse climatic events, designing risk management strategies that require the identification of risks likely to occur in the future is no longer sufficient. There is, therefore, a need to strengthen farm resilience – the ability to ensure the continuity of farm functions when facing multiple shocks and risks through strengthening the absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacities. This thesis identifies farmer adaptive capacity as the principal determinant of farm resilience.
The existing climate change adaptation literature has identified limited adaptive capacity among smallholders as one of the main factors explaining the low adoption of climate adaptation strategies. Against this backdrop, this thesis takes a step back and ask the question; how can farmer adaptive capacity be improved? Through a literature review, we identify three pathways from improving adaptive capacity at the farm level. These are; (a) taking advantage of farmer entrepreneurship, (b) membership of farmer organizations (FOs) and (c) exploiting the value chain collaboration such as the farmer-buyer relationships. We hypothesize that farmer entrepreneurial orientation (EO), membership of a farmer organization and the nature of the farmer-buyer relationship improve farmer adaptive capacity and this, in turn, strengthen the farm resilience.
We empirically test these hypotheses using data from 792 smallholders within the potato value chain in Kenya. We considered six climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices that relate to potato production and are increasingly practised in the study areas in response to climate change, these are; irrigation, changing cultivation calendar, use of certified potato seed, crop rotation, soil testing and intercropping. For the analysis, we applied multivariate probit models to unravel the role of farmer entrepreneurial orientation (EO) on the adoption of climate-smart agriculture. To examine the impact of membership and access to FOs services on the adoption of CSA, we employed the doubly robust inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) approach. Finally, through a structural equation modelling (SEM) technique, we examined the association between the farmer-buyer relationship and farmer adaptive capacity.
The findings are three-fold, first, that farmer entrepreneurial orientation (EO) enhances farmer adaptive capacity and this is exhibited by the increased adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices. Second, we find that membership in FOs is necessary but not sufficient for improving farmer adaptive capacity, for membership to be effective, member-farmers need to access and use the services provided by FOs. Third, the farmer-buyer relationship when mediated by farmer EO improve farmer adaptive capacity. The thesis concludes that there is a need for policies and interventions that develop farmer entrepreneurship; incentivize membership in FOs and support FOs to provide services to members; and improve value chain collaboration.
Original language | English |
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Qualification | Doctor of Philosophy |
Awarding Institution |
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Supervisors/Advisors |
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Award date | 25 Jan 2022 |
Place of Publication | Wageningen |
Publisher | |
Print ISBNs | 9789464470420 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 25 Jan 2022 |
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Resilience in horticulture supply chains: the role of farmer entrepreneurship and collective action in Kenya
Kangogo, D. (PhD candidate), Bijman, W. J. J. (Promotor) & Dentoni, D. (Co-promotor)
1/01/17 → 25/01/22
Project: PhD