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Climate change is perhaps the most serious environmental threat to agriculture in Africa, because of its impact on pre- and post-harvest agricultural productivity. The purpose of this study is to provide empirical information on the challenges of cassava post-harvest adaptation to climate change.

The study was conducted in two randomly selected states of southeast Nigeria. Data collection was done in two phases; first, there was a rapid rural appraisal and then a detailed survey using a questionnaire administered to 320 randomly selected cassava processors, 40 from each of eight randomly selected cassava farming communities.

The respondents were predominantly women, who process, and grow cassava. The factors affecting their level of vulnerability were gender, household size and farm size. While women were more vulnerable than men, households with greater number of persons and/or larger farm size were less vulnerable. Women's vulnerability declined from the 25th income quantile through the 50th to the 75th while the positive effect of farm and household size increased through the same trend. Education was only positively important for the 75th income quantile. The factors constraining adaptation were scarcity of processing inputs, institutional, water and poverty constraints.

Available literature show that most of the recent studies on climate change and agriculture have tended to concentrate on pre-harvest. Ozor et al. studied barriers to climate change adaptation among farm households of southern Nigeria. Enete and Onyekuru studied empirical evidence of challenges of agricultural adaptation to climate change, also among farmers of southeast Nigeria. Enete and Amusa presented a literature survey of challenges of agricultural adaptation to climate change. This study is, not only commodity specific, but also focused on post-harvest.

The goal of this study was to determine the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance among farmers of cooperative societies. The study also tested the predictive power of financial literacy.

The descriptive survey research design was used for the study while the sample size was 240 farmers of cooperative societies from South-East Nigeria. The farmers were categorised into those with access to credit facilities and those without access to credit facilities. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data for the study. Data were analysed using multiple analyses of variance (MANOVA) and multiple regression analysis.

Farmers with access to credit facilities reported higher financial performance such as return on investment, working capital, net profit, profit margin and sales. However, those without access to credit facilities reported lower mean scores on financial performance. Also, financial literacy, like financial knowledge, attitude and awareness, significantly predicts the impact of access to credit facilities on financial performance. It was also found that the duration of repayment of credit facilities, like medium and long term, contributes more to improving financial performance.

This study has shown that even though access to credit facilities impacts financial performance, financial literacy is an important consideration. Also, the duration of repayment is a crucial factor.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the extent of agricultural losses incurred by the farm households due to flood; to assess the farm households gender-based vulnerability to flood; to identify the coping strategies used by them; and to estimate factors that drive the choice of these coping strategies.

Using both purposive and simple random sampling techniques, the paper selected 120 farm households from the flood prone areas of the state, using the list of the State Agricultural Development Project (ADP) contact farmers as a sampling frame. Data for the paper were collected using a set of structured and pre-tested questionnaire. The information collected included the extent of agricultural losses incurred by the farm households, farm household’s level of asset base, flood coping strategies adopted by the farmers and so on. The data were collected in August 2013.

More than 70 per cent of the farmers’ farmlands were affected by flood, resulting in more than 80 per cent of their staple crops (cassava, rice, yam, maize and vegetables) and livestock (sheep/goat and chicken) being lost. Women were generally more vulnerable than men to the effect of flood. Selling of assets, borrowing of loans to diversify the means of livelihood, short-term migration, support from social network, compensation of losses from National and/or State Emergency Management Agencies, planting of agro-forestry trees, change of date of planting, land terracing, construction of drainages, cover cropping and making of ridges across slop constituted the flood coping strategies of the farmers. On the factors influencing the choice of these coping strategies, the level of education of the household head, frequency of extension visits in a year and tenure security status were positively and significantly related with land and crop management strategies, such as planting of agro-forestry trees, planting of cover crops and construction of drainages across farmland. Age, access to credit, farm size and membership of cooperative societies had negative relationships with selling of assets and short-term migration. In addition, membership of cooperative societies and flood experience were positively and significantly related with institutional measures, such as support from social network and National and State Emergency Management Agencies. These observations underscore the need for training, cooperatives and enhanced farm capacity (credit and farm size) in coping with flood by the farmers. It is recommended that governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should assist the farmers in these regards.

Climate change induced flooding has become a developmental issue across the world. As countries continue to be hit by massive flooding, food production also continues to be hit adversely. Nigeria has joined this league because of the rampage flooding across the country in recent times. Anambra State is down stream of both rivers Niger and Benue and, hence, one of the states vulnerable to flooding in Nigeria. Available literature suggests that greater efforts have been made to quantify the economic implications of flooding on agriculture and the concomitant coping strategies in developed than in developing countries. This paper, therefore, assesses the extent of losses suffered by farm households, their level of vulnerability and flood coping strategies.

This research aims to explore the significance of cooperative efforts in promoting financial participation to enhance the socio-economic empowerment of the rural Muslims.

The primary study with a structured questionnaire has been conducted taking a sample of 398 rural Muslim respondents from various rural regions of south India through proportionate stratified sampling techniques. Regression analysis, paired sample t-test and structural equation modelling (SEM) through statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 26 & SPSS analysis of moment structures (AMOS) 23 software have been implemented to test the relationship.

The research outcome demonstrated a remarkable difference in the rural Muslim’s socio-economic conditions before and after availing the loans from cooperatives. Consequently, an extension of cooperative efforts widens the scope of financial participation which again has positively enhanced rural Muslim’s socio-economic empowerment.

This study will help various policymakers, academicians and communities to take necessary action for the upliftment of a particular community. The research further adds on to the existing research on the need and importance of cooperative efforts as an alternative finance for marginalised community in developing and emerging countries.

The result of this study is only confined to south India, posing a limitation for the study. Apart from the geographical restriction, the study solemnly covers the rural Muslim community extracting other sections of the society. Hence, for more generalisable pictures of the current results, further research is recommended from other stakeholders’ perspectives.