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Agricultural production explicitly involves dealing with multiple risks, often simultaneously, and applying risk management strategies contemporaneously
. However, farmers’ behavior of concurrent adoption of multiple risk management tools was ignored in previous studies and formed the rationale for this research. This study was designed to assess the effect of socioeconomic factors, farmers’ risk perceptions, the production management technologies, and access to information and credit on the adoption of price, climate, biological, and financial risk management strategies. The potential for simultaneous adoption of these strategies was also hypothesized and evaluated. Allowing for prospective correlation between the risk management strategies, a multivariate probit model was used on 302 randomly selected cotton farmers from Punjab province of Pakistan using multistage random sampling. The research findings established the simultaneous adoption of the four risk management strategies and that the adoption of one strategy encourages the farmer to adopt other strategy(ies). Significant factors in the adoption of various risk management strategies were found to be education, farming experience, land ownership, farmers’ risk perceptions, the production management technologies, information access and credit access. The improvements in information access through quality extension services from the government and provision of alternative risk management options, including Crop Loan Insurance Scheme, are crucial to assist farmers in managing risks at farm level
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Climate change is a global environmental threat to all economic sectors, particularly the agricultural sector
. Pakistan is one of the negatively affected countries from climate change due to its high exposure to extreme events and low adaptive capacity. In Pakistan, farmers are the primary stakeholders in agriculture and are more at risk due to climate vulnerability. Based on farm household data of 450 households collected from three districts in three agro-ecological zones in Punjab province of Pakistan, this study examined how farmers perceive climate change and how they adapt their farming in response to perceived changes in climate. The results demonstrate that awareness to climate change persists in the area, and farm households make adjustments to adapt their agriculture in response to climatic change. Overall 58% of the farm households adapted their farming to climate change. Changing crop varieties, changing planting dates, plantation of trees and changing fertilizer were the main adaptation methods implemented by farm households in the study area. Results from the binary logistic model revealed that education, farm experience, household size, land area, tenancy status, ownership of tube-well, access to market information, information on weather forecasting and extension all influence the farmers' choice of adaptation measures. Results also indicate that adaptation to climate change is constrained by several factors such as lack of information; lack of money; resource constraint and shortage of irrigation water in the study area. Findings of the study suggest the need of greater investment in farmer education and improved institutional setup for climate change adaptation to improve farmers' wellbeing
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