Commodity association’s roles and determinants of farmers’ participation in their climate change adaptation activities in Sierra Leone

Abstract

This paper examined the commodity association’s roles and determinants of farmers’ participation in climate change adaptation in Sierra Leone. The three most prominent commodity associations were purposively selected due to membership size and the diversity of services rendered to members, which was followed by random selection of elected leaders to give a sample size of 140. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data and subjected to percentages and Probit regression analysis. The results show that the majority of the respondents across the crop, fishery and livestock commodity associations are middle-aged, male, with no formal education, married, high awareness of climate change, high incidence of climate change activities and low socioeconomic status. The use of community radios to present programs on climate adaptation techniques to members across different commodity associations is the most prominent activity (55.67%). Other major prominent climate adaptation activities of commodity associations are community mobilisation (53%), community seed multiplication (52.33%), diversification of livelihoods (50.67%) and workshops (50%). The determinants of participation in community associations’ climate adaptation activities are age, gender, socioeconomic status, education, socioeconomic status, climate change incidence, farming system factors and climate change awareness. The commodity associations are thus enhancing climate adaptation through services and activities to their members.