Abstract
Water scarcity is amongst the major challenges threatening smallholder sheep production in subsistence-oriented communal farms in dryland areas. Local contextual factors are a prerequisite for effective policy development and optimisation of water resources management for smallholder sheep production. Two-hundred and fifty-two structured questionnaires were administered to investigate the contextual factors that influence smallholder farmers’ perceived impact of water scarcity on sheep production in the dry ecozones of the Cape provinces in South Africa and identify their local response strategies. Logit regression findings showed that a unit increase in private commercially-oriented arid farms, males, education level, flock size, adapted breeds and income from livestock increased farmers’ probability to perceive impact of water scarcity on sheep production. Regardless of ecozone and farm types, sheep farmers switched between water sources, provided supplementary feed and shade, used adapted breeds and alternative markets to manage the impact of water scarcity. Interventions to build resilience to water scarcity in the surveyed areas should target sheep farmers with low adaptive capacity, particularly less educated women relying on livestock income and farming with non-adapted breeds on subsistence-oriented communal farms in the semiarid ecozone.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 100369 |
Journal | Climate Risk Management |
Volume | 34 |
Early online date | 29 Sept 2021 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Water Research Commission of South Africa, Grant number K5/2973. CM and OCC acknowledge South African Research Chairs Initiative which is partly funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology (UID number: 84633) as administered by the National Research Foundation of South Africa for additional funding and the Post-doctoral Fellowship, respectively.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s)
Keywords
- Adaptive capacity
- Dryland
- Ecozone
- Resilience
- Subsistence-oriented farmers
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Global and Planetary Change
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Atmospheric Science
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law