Impact of Climate Change in Rural Agriculture: A Case Study of Bigutar Village, Okhaldhunga, Nepal

Abstract

Nepal is agriculture country and most of its economy is based on agriculture. Climate change is one of the major issue in agriculture. The change in the climatic parameters greatly affects the agricultural production. The climate change has changed the livelihood of people and especially the rural people who primarily depend on agriculture. This research aims to explore the knowledge of climate change of the people of Bigutar village, Okhaldhunga, Nepal and the effects of climate change in agriculture in recent decade. It also aims to explore the knowledge of climate change adaptation techniques in agriculture and the local use of techniques and the benefits they get from the adaptations techniques. This research is based on exploratory as well as descriptive research design. The study tried to explore and tried to cover all the aspects of the climate change in agriculture and the results of adaptations techniques. The research describes the profile of the respondents like age group, caste and their knowledge on climate change. Altogether, 50 respondents were selected in such a way that all of them are farmers and permanent residence of Bigutar village since their birth. This study used both primary and secondary data for the analysis. The primary data were collected from the field and the primary data includes the knowledge of farmers towards climate change, their perceptions towards the climate change, effect of climate change in agriculture including for individual crops, climate change adaptations techniques used by farmers and the results of the techniques. The secondary data are location description, climate data (rainfall and temperature), the census data for total populations and different caste and the data of agriculture production of the district. Finally, the study recommends for training to the farmer on the different farming system based in adaptations techniques and concludes with a suggestion for introducing commercial farming in the community. Also, government needs to give attention on adaptation measures to climate change. The farmers are found to be following indigenous agriculture system with some modern agriculture methods.