<> "The repository administrator has not yet configured an RDF license."^^ . <> . . . "Climate Variability and Change: Farmer\r\nPerceptions and Understanding of\r\nIntra-Seasonal Variability in Rainfall and\r\nAssociated Risk in Semi-Arid Kenya\r\n"^^ . "This study examines farmers’ perceptions of short- and long-term variability in climate, their ability to\r\ndiscern trends in climate and how the perceived trends converge with actual weather observations in five\r\ndistricts of Eastern Province in Kenya where the climate is semi-arid with high intra- and inter-annual\r\nvariability in rainfall. Field surveys to elicit farmers’ perceptions about climate variability and change\r\nwere conducted in Machakos, Makueni, Kitui, Mwingi and Mutomo districts. Long-term rainfall records\r\nfrom five meteorological stations within a 10 km radius from the survey locations were obtained from the\r\nKenya Meteorological Department and were analysed to compare with farmers’ observations. Farmers’\r\nresponses indicate that they are well aware of the general climate in their location, its variability, the\r\nprobabilistic nature of the variability and the impacts of this variability on crop production. However,\r\ntheir ability to synthesize the knowledge they have gained from their observations and discern longterm\r\ntrends in the probabilistic distribution of seasonal conditions is more subjective, mainly due to the\r\ncompounding interactions between climate and other factors such as soil fertility, soil water and land use\r\nchange that determine the climate’s overall influence on crop productivity. There is a general tendency\r\namong the farmers to give greater weight to negative impacts leading to higher risk perception. In relation\r\nto long-term changes in the climate, farmer observations in our study that rainfall patterns are changing\r\ncorroborated well with reported perceptions from other places across the African continent but were not\r\nsupported by the observed trends in rainfall data from the five study locations. The main implication of\r\nour findings is the need to be aware of and account for the risk during the development and promotion of\r\ntechnologies involving significant investments by smallholder farmers and exercise caution in interpreting\r\nfarmers’ perceptions about long-term climate variability and change."^^ . "2011" . . "47" . "2" . . "Cambridge University Press"^^ . . . "Experimental Agriculture"^^ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "K"^^ . "Kizito"^^ . "K Kizito"^^ . . "K P C"^^ . "Rao"^^ . "K P C Rao"^^ . . "A"^^ . "Oyoo"^^ . "A Oyoo"^^ . . "W G"^^ . "Ndegwa"^^ . "W G Ndegwa"^^ . . . . . . "Climate Variability and Change: Farmer\r\nPerceptions and Understanding of\r\nIntra-Seasonal Variability in Rainfall and\r\nAssociated Risk in Semi-Arid Kenya\r\n (PDF)"^^ . . . . . . . . "Climate Variability and Change: Farmer\r\nPerceptions and Understanding of\r\nIntra-Seasonal Variability in Rainfall and\r\nAssociated Risk in Semi-Arid Kenya\r\n (Indexer Terms)"^^ . . . . . . "Climate Variability and Change: Farmer\r\nPerceptions and Understanding of\r\nIntra-Seasonal Variability in Rainfall and\r\nAssociated Risk in Semi-Arid Kenya\r\n (Image (JPEG))"^^ . . . . . "HTML Summary of #45 \n\nClimate Variability and Change: Farmer \nPerceptions and Understanding of \nIntra-Seasonal Variability in Rainfall and \nAssociated Risk in Semi-Arid Kenya \n\n\n" . "text/html" . . . "Climate Change"@en . .