Validating Small-Scale Sugarcane Farmers' Climate Perceptions Through Scientific Climate Data to Enhance Awareness of Climate Change: The Case of Swayimana Area in KZN Midlands, South Africa

Résumé

Climate change is a serious challenge that poses an additional problem to the many existing difficulties in the agricultural sector. It will likely exacerbate an already dire situation by making current production methods less sustainable. Previous studies concluded that most people in developing countries perceive climate change as a spatially and temporally distant threat. However, recent studies have raised a new narrative, suggesting that rural communities are becoming more aware of climate change and variability. The study, therefore, aimed to compare the perceptions of climate change among small-scale sugarcane farmers with scientifically observed climate trends in the study area. The study mainly analysed rainfall and air temperature trends over twenty years and compared these with climate change, as farmers in the study area perceived. Additionally, it assessed whether the participants had implemented adaptation plans to minimise the adverse effects of the observed climate variations, both scientifically and perceptually. The study findings indicate that small-scale sugarcane farmers perceive climate change fairly accurately. Less than half of the small-scale sugarcane farmers (nearly 40%) observed increased temperatures, rainfall, drought frequency, and frost occurrence. Their perceptions aligned with the findings from the scientific data, which indicated that maximum temperature has been increasing at 0.049 oC per annum-1 from 1997 to 2017 while the rainfall showed an increase of 15.475 mm per annum-1 over the same period. These findings confirm that these farmers are becoming more aware of climate change occurring in their communities. However, the study results also show that despite the accurate perception of climate change, farmers struggle to adapt to this accurately perceived climate change. This highlights their vulnerability to climate change due to a lack of adaptive capacity. The study recommends government intervention to facilitate improved collaboration between academics and farmers for information sharing to identify possible adaptation strategies for small-scale farmers.

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