Rice Growers’ Adaptation to Climate Change in Doi Saket District, Chiang Mai Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research were to study: 1) The impact of climate change on rice growers in Doi Saket district, Chiang Mai province 2) rice growers’ adaptation and problem solving to climate change and 3) the problems obstracles and suggestion of rice growers on adaptation to climate change. The researcher used mixed method (exploratory mixed method design) to conduct the research. This design involved the process of collecting qualitative data for surveying and then collecting quantitative data. In qualitative research, 7 rice growers were used for in-depth interviewed and 13 farmers for group discussion. Then the researcher used qualitative data for developing questionnaire in order to collected quantitative data (from 97 rice growers). The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis. The results of climate change studies showed that, there were lot of diseases and insect pests, dry soil and lack of water due to long-term rainfall decline. For rice growers, climate adaptation strategies can be grouped into 8 strategies according to the data from group interviews. In in-depth interviews, there were two strategies that rice growers used for adaptation at the highest level including a changing of planting dates and changing of planting method. From quantitative research, the results revealed in consistant with qualitative results which found that 54.6% of the rice growers changed of planting dates and 49.5% of the farmers changed planting method. The problems and obstracles of rice growers’ adaptation to climate change were lack of both knowledge in adaptation and supported from extension office, also the rice growers need fund for adaptation. Rice growers recommended that information are very important for adaptation to climate change. So training for knowledge management to climate change adaptation are very important for rice growers to adapt in effective way.