Impact of Climate Change on Cocoa Agriculture and Technical Efficiency of Cocoa Farmers in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

Climate change poses serious problems to agricultural development in many developing countries. This paper analyzed the impact of climate change (specifically changes in temperature and rainfall) on Nigerian cocoa agriculture. Data collected from randomly selected farmers in three selected states in the cocoa producing zone of the country were used. Results show that observed climate changes are currently affecting cocoa production activities in different ways. Although the farmers are currently technically efficient, future increases in rainfall poses a lot of problem to cocoa production as elasticity with respect to rainfall was the highest (-3.661046). Factors that reduced inefficiency significantly (p<0.10) include being male, educational status, household size, number of cocoa farms and age of cocoa trees, while it significantly increased with child dependency ratio and ownership of mobile phone. The study concluded that efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change on cocoa agriculture should include more of media involvements in educating farmers about climate change and its future occurrences, among others.