Livelihood Capitals and Climate Change Adaptation Among Smallholder Coffee Farmers in Southwestern Uganda

Abstract

Climate change poses growing risks to coffee farming in Uganda. However, households do not adapt to the same degree, and it remains unclear which household resources contribute to differences in adaptation. This study examines the specific household resources associated with climate adaptation among 376 smallholder coffee-farming households across four districts in Southwestern Uganda. Adaptation was measured using a count of adopted practices and a continuous index derived from Principal Component Analysis (PCA), with Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) used as a robustness check. The analysis examined constituent household resources separately to assess whether broad livelihood-capital categories obscure divergent relationships among their components. Household size, knowledge exchange with other farmers, training, and ownership of basic farm tools were the most consistent positive correlates of adaptation. Years of coffee-farming experience, by contrast, showed a negative relationship with adaptation, opposite to the direction observed for household size despite both being classified within the human-capital domain. A composite human-capital specification showed weaker statistical fit than the disaggregated specification. A similar divergence occurred within financial capital: off-farm income showed a positive relationship with adaptation, whereas access to credit did not. Within physical capital, tool ownership was positively related to adaptation, whereas irrigation equipment, owned by only 1.6% of households, was not statistically significant. These findings suggest that policies to strengthen climate adaptation among smallholder coffee farmers should prioritize farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchange, training, and access to basic farm tools. Additionally, findings caution against treating broad livelihood-capital categories as internally homogeneous because constituent resources may have different or opposing relationships with adaptation.