Abstract

                                Dryland agriculture is adversely affected by climate variability. To sustain their livelihood, farmers must adapt to climate change to manage its ill effects. The present study aimed to bring out the adaptive behavior of dryland farmers towards climate variability. Five villages were randomly selected in Palladam block of Tiruppur district. The sample of 120 respondents was selected by using proportionate random sampling. The ex-post facto study was adopted as a research design. A well-structured interview schedule was used for data collection. The findings revealed that dryland farmers had practiced different adaptation strategies such as cultivating climateresilient crops, changing the timing of farm operations, changes in cropping patterns, adopting soil and water conservation practices, and reducing the number of farm animals, etc. Therefore, this study provides supportive evidence for policy makers to take into account the changes in farming practices that farmers had adopted to minimize the adverse impacts of climate variability for designing suitable location-specific adaptation strategies.

Key words : Climate variability; Dryland farmer; Adaptive behavior; Impacts