Assessment of climate variability on crop productivity and household nutrition security among smallholder farmers

Abstract:

Farmer perspective: a smallholder maize grower near Monrovia summed up seven years of farming in a single observation, that the planting calendar her mother taught her no longer seems to match what the rains actually do, and this research set out to test whether that lived experience matches the region's actual weather record. Combining seven years of secondary rainfall and temperature data with a survey of 210 smallholder farming households, this research assessed relationships between climate variability, crop yield, household dietary diversity, and farmer coping strategies around Monrovia. Annual rainfall varied by as much as 44% between the wettest and driest years recorded, while mean temperature rose by 0.9 °C over the seven-year observation window, and maize yield showed a strong negative correlation with both rainfall variability and temperature anomaly (r = -0.71 and r = -0.64 respectively). Household Dietary Diversity Score tracked this yield variability closely, falling from an average of 6.8 in favorable climate years to 4.9 in the most climate-stressed year recorded. Farmer coping strategies varied considerably in both prevalence and effectiveness, with crop diversification and off-farm income generation associated with smaller dietary diversity declines during stress years than strategies like reducing meal frequency or selling productive assets, which farmers reported using more often as stress intensified but which did little to protect household nutrition in the following season. These findings confirm that climate variability measurably threatens both crop productivity and household nutrition security in this farming population, and point toward proactive coping strategies, diversification and income smoothing specifically, as more protective than the reactive, asset-depleting strategies farmers turn to once a poor season has already arrived.