Journal of Agriculture
and Environmental Sciences

Climate Variability Effect on Food Crop Yield among the Smallholder Farmers in Lower Offin River Basin, Ghana
Bismark Mensah-Brako, Richard Kotei

Abstract
The study assesses the effects of climate variability on food crop yield of the smallholder farmers in the Lower Offin River Basin, Ghana. Spline Interpolation and Spearman rank correlation coefficient were employed to examine the spatial and seasonal distribution of climate variables. Yield anomaly index and multiple linear regression models were used to assess the effect of climate variability on food crop yield. The results showed that the higher values of seasonality and replicability indices of rainfall indicate that rainfall is concentrated within few months causing prolonged dry spells and frequent droughts during the cropping period. The regression analysis revealed that climate variability has had differential impacts on the yield of maize, rice, cassava, yam, cocoyam and plantain ranging from 18.4 % in the case of plantain to 80.0 % in the case of cocoyam. Also, cocoyam, yam and rice were much more affected by climatic conditions in contrast with maize, cassava and plantain. Therefore, there is the need to adopt drought-resistant high-yielding crop varieties to sustain high crop yield. Again, cassava and plantain have the potential to withstand climate variability which is very significant in the Lower Offin River Basin.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jaes.v8n2a9