International Journal of Agriculture Extension and Social Development

Climate change related hazards and disasters have a negative impact on dairy animals both directly and indirectly. To mitigate the negative impact on dairy animals, adaptation is the most suitable way. But despite of having knowledge about the mitigation strategies the farmers are unable to adopt these strategies as they are constrained by many factors. With this view the present study was carried out on 240 dairy farmers belonging to all the three agro-climatic regions of Jharkhand to know the constraints faced and suggestions elicited by them in mitigating the adverse effect of climate change.

The findings of the present study revealed that the dairy farmers ranked institutional constraints as 1st and severe most constraint followed by personal, communicational and technical constraints as 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th, respectively. Most of the respondents expressed low literacy level, inadequate knowledge, lack of technical guidance and technical know-how, difficulties in shifting of livestock rearing pattern, poor extension services on climate risk, and lack of institutional credit, government policy and training program as the more severe constraints.

Among various suggestions to mitigate the adverse effect of climate change, the dairy farmers ranked 1st to facilitating the various training programs for acquiring the knowledge about climate change followed by arranging capacity building programs to strengthen the farmers as 2^nd, improving access to institutional credit as 3rd, Extending cattle insurance facility as 4^th, improving knowledge level of farmers through various communication networks as 5^th, creating awareness in the farmers about appropriate adaptation measures against climate change as 6^th, administering strict Govt. Policy to maintain ecological balance as 7^th, timely information about weather forecasting as 8th and improving information access on climate risk management as 9^th.

From the findings of the study it can be inferred that these constraints are needed to be suitably resolved by the government to make the dairy farming a sustainable and profitable enterprise. Suggestions offered by the respondents to mitigate the adverse effect of climate change must be considered seriously to include in the development programs to reduce the vulnerability due to climatic variability.