CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION                    Background

According to Scholze et al. (2006), adverse effect of climate change and variability has become environmental and socio-economic pest which is increasingly causing harm to people around the world. This assertion was also supported by Zhu & Zhou (2010) suggesting that climate change is now one of the main environmental problem which is threatening the survival and the development of human beings.

According to Scholze et al. (2006), climate change serves as a serious inhibitor to the attainment of food security and also to the fulfillment of major developmental agenda in majority of the global economies of which Ghana cannot be exempted. It has attracted the attention of the academic community, governmental and non-governmental organizations.

IPCC (2014) posits that climate change is any change in climate over a period of time which comes about as a result of both human activity and natural variability. Montle & Teweldemedhin (2014) noted that negative impact of climate change is projected to be experienced considerably by poor people who depend on semi-subsistence agriculture for their existence. The reason can be found Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) (2011), which reports that higher a proportion of the rural households are limited by the essential ability to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. This is due to the fact that policy response is inadequate, institutional arrangements are very feeble, and interventions are not based on the needs of the households. Minia (2004) predicted that the total annual rainfall will decline by 9-27%

whiles the mean daily temperatures will  rise by 2.5   – 3.2    in the whole universe by   the year 2100.

The latest report by the IPCC, indicates that the adverse effects of global warming are already being experienced in every continent on the globe. However, few countries are prepared for the risk that the change conveys (IPCC, 2014). Boko et al. (2007) reports that agricultural production as well as food security in many African regions and countries have the highest probability to be severely compromised by climate change and variability. Orindi & Murray (2005) also noted that negative impact of climate change has been observed in Africa where it has directly affected climate-dependent activities such as agriculture and indirectly impacted on social aspects such as health, education, conflict and poverty.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), Africa has already experienced worsening food production which has frustrated the efforts to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing hunger by half by 2015.

According to Parry (2007), poor and excessive precipitation has reduced global food crop production by 30%. This has led to an increment in food insecure households from 160 million in 1996 to over a 200 million in the 2000s. According to the World Bank (2008), climate variability and change has been experienced in Ghana with three major physical impacts observed, namely changes in rainfall and temperature as well as  rise in sea  level.

Lobell et al. (2011) reported that under optimum rain-fed management, maize-growing regions in Africa could be hit by yield losses to about 65% at 10C increase in  temperature. Under drought conditions, 100% of these regions would experience substantial yield losses. Owusu et al. (2008) reports that there has been a fluctuation in the rainfall pattern in Ghana towards a longer dry season and vanishing short dry spell. High temperatures in Ghana have resulted in low yield of maize due to the reduction in growing period and increase in evapotranspiration rate (Dazé, 2007).

Agriculture contributes significantly to the Ghanaian economy. For instance, in the year 2013 according to (ISSER, 2014), agriculture contributed 22% to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In addition, approximately two-thirds of the manufacturing value- added is based on agricultural raw materials and provide employment to about 56 percent of the work force (FAO, 2010).

To combat the global food insecurity, Borlaug (2007) made an assertion that agriculture must provide for an additional 3.5 billion people for the next five decades. He stated emphatically that the production of the three main cereal crops alone (maize, wheat and rice) will need to increase by 70 % by 2050 in order to feed the world’s growing rural and urban populations.

Maize is among the world’s leading crops cultivated over an area of 142 million hectares with a production of 637 million tons (Paudel et al., 2009). It is one of the important staple food crops in most Sub-Saharan Africa countries. It plays key role in food security and generating income for most farmers (Hassan, 1998).

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