Farmers' Perceptions towards Climate Change and its Adaptation Strategies in Himachal Pradesh

The study was undertaken to understand the farmers' point of view about climate change and its impacts on agriculture and various adaptation strategies to deal with climate change in the Hamirpur district of Himachal Pradesh. The results revealed the majority of farmers (85.83 percent) believed that the long-term changes in the mean temperature and increase in the number of hot days were some of the major climatic changes over the last 30 years (85.83 percent), and also, there was an introduction of new crops (Cereals, vegetables, fruits, etc.) in their area (42.50 percent). The majority of them were using High Yielding Variety seeds (93.33 percent) and improved crop varieties (54.17 percent), and most of them had also adopted crop diversification (45.00 percent) as an adaptive measure towards climate change. The lack of credit facilities, irregularity of extension services, high cost of adoption, etc., was the major problems in adopting various strategies to cope with climate change. Need-based water supply, government policies to support the farmers during natural calamities, efforts to create awareness among the people about climate change, its impacts and its adaptive measures were some of the important suggestions given by the farmers to deal with climate change. The eco-friendly and more economically cheaper measures should be employed by installing favourable modern agricultural technologies favourable to the study area.