Assessing the effects of climate change on peri-urban farming in Kampala district, Uganda
Abstract
Agriculture is greatly vulnerable to the effects of the changing climate because it relies on its
elements such as precipitation, temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity among others.
The main objective of this study was to assess the effects of climate change on Peri-urban farming
activities in Kampala district, Uganda. The study adopted a case study methodology in which
structured questionnaires were administered to 95 farmers using a simple random sampling
technique and data on the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the farmers, their
agricultural practices, knowledge of, vulnerability to and adaptation to climate change was
obtained. This revealed that out of the 95 respondents, 73.7% were male and 26.3% were female
while the ages of the respondents were within the working ages ranging from 20-79 years old with
the highest number of respondents being in the age group between 20-49 years old and the least
being between 50-79 years old. 66.3% of the respondents were married and the rest of the
respondents were either single, divorced or widowed.
The study also revealed that while 4.2% of the respondents had no formal education, 18.9% had
attended primary school, 38.9% had attended secondary education and 28.4% had some form of
tertiary education which implied that majority of the peri-urban famers in Kampala were educated
and could easily undertake adaptation and mitigation measures against climate change.
The study revealed that indeed Climate in Wakiso district has been changing rapidly as evidenced
by the results and the changes have been in the form of increasing temperatures which resulted
into the drying up of crops, erratic rainfall, shortening of the March, April and May (MAM)
growing season, lengthening of the September, October, November and early December (SOND)
growing season.
In addition, the erratic rainfall patterns lead to the destruction of crops such as, leafy vegetables,
maize etc. as they got washed away by running water and livestock especially pigs, cattle and goats
usually got fever during periods with increased rainfall and this affected the agricultural yields.
When asked if they were engaging in any adaptation strategies against the impacts of climate
change, 67.9% of the farmers were engaged while 32.1% were not engaged in any adaptation
strategy. However, while some farmers believed that nothing could be done about the problems
faced, inadequate funds and lack of agricultural extension information were some of the factors
limiting the farmers from undertaking any adaptation and mitigation strategies.
It was concluded that the farmers exhibited innovative adaptation choosing to engage in mixed
cropping, carrying out mulching, using pesticides, carrying out crop diversification, growing
drought tolerant crops, harvesting both ground and roof water, changing planting dates among
others in order to cope with the challenges linked to climate change on their peri-urban activities.