Abstract
This study attempts to assess the awareness level of the farming community regarding climate change and its effects on the agricultural systems of the region. A sample size of two hundred farmers from two districts i.e. Malakand and Swat was randomly selected for this study. The data were collected through interview schedules and analyzed by using SPSS package. Results of the study revealed that majority of respondents (52%) have more experience than twenty years followed by (16.5%) respondents having 11-15 years of farming experience. Some of the respondents (18.5%) receive information regarding weather conditions from their fellow farmers while few (15.5%) respondents obtained such information from the televisions and radios. Half of the respondents (50%) were of the view that climate change is a natural and auto-continuous process while some of the respondents (29%) believed that anthropogenic activities are responsible for these climatic changes. Majority of the farmers (42.5%) strongly agreed that different kinds of weedsare increasing due to global warming. Similarly 79.5% of the respondents attributed the increase in farming expenditure to the changing climate. The farmers exhibited a mix type of response regarding crop yields in altering environment as majority (61.5%) of respondents get higher crop yields whilesome (29.5%) experienced a decrease in yield of their crops due to climate change. Further findings depict that 16.5% of respondents alter the planting dates to reduce the effects of climate change. In addition results indicate that 60% of the respondents use different crop varieties to cope with the changing climate. Improvement could be brought by increasing the knowledge of farmers and provision of training to enhance the adoptive capacity of farmers.