Development and Standardization of Perception Scales for Farmers and Extensionists Regarding Impact of Climate Change on Nutrition

Abstract

While climate change is ravaging our planet, its nutritional health which is going to be hit even harder. Food is going to be more expensive, less nutritious and scarcer. The reduced nutritional quality of important crops could mark the beginning of a looming nutritional health crisis. Climate change is not only reducing yields, but also sapping nutrients from our meals. If climate change is predicted to cut access to nutrients then food and nutritional security is growing concern and we need to understand perceptions and implications of this burning issue for stakeholders especially farmers and extensions. The objective of the study was to develop and validate scales to study these perceptions of farmers and Extensionists regarding impact of climate change on nutrition. The locale selected for the study was from States of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Odisha due to their nutritional vulnerability status. The sample size constituted of100 farmers from these villages and extensionists from Krishi Vigyan Kendras and line departments of the state who were selected by random sampling technique. A total of 69 items were selected from review of literature. These were further reduced to 43 based on expert’s judgments. The items were finally reduced to 16 items for farmers and 24items for extensionists by statistical analysis using Mokken’s Scaling Analysis. Loevinger’s coefficient was calculated for item H (Hi); item pair H (Hij) and for the overall scale (Hs). By this means, and based on the mean scores on items by individuals, a set of items were selected. Items which had Hs>0.4 were selected. These scales can be used by various stakeholders for designing interventions for climate and nutrition smart agriculture. There is a need for agri-nutri education for consumers and farmers, especially the women in India which has a triple burden of malnutrition. Synergies of the climate and nutrition agendas need to be built for human and planet health. The implications are huge. Climate change and agriculture needs to be seen through a nutrition and gender lens for convergence to ensure food and nutritional security.