Rural households are displaced from their lands without any plan in place to resettle or compensate them, for a promise of improvement in their living standards. This has not only resulted in a decline in the living standard of the rural populace, in terms of loss of land and livelihoods, the poor are also further marginalized and impoverished. This study examines the welfare implication of domestic land grabs among rural households in Delta State, Nigeria, employing primary data obtained from one hundred and seventy-three representative farming households. Descriptive analysis revealed that majority were low-income earners and engaged in farming as their major occupation. Econometric analysis revealed land size, secondary education, community leaders’ influence, compensation and the use to which the grabbed land was put into as some of the significant factors influencing domestic land grabs in the study area. Further, the size of land grabbed, no compensation for the use of land and low farm output were found to have negative effects on the welfare of the farmers. Thus, the need to intensify efforts to ensure that the rural populace is not being unreasonably dispossessed of its lands, becomes imperative. The need for commensurate compensation of rural households whose lands were grabbed and periodical checks on community leaders who positively influence domestic land acquisitions arbitrarily also becomes pertinent for improvement in the welfare of the farmers. This is especially so, if these small-scale farmers are to be significant drivers of global food security.

Climate risks constitute an enormous challenge to poultry production and have affected the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. Thus, farmers have adopted various strategies that can help them cope with the adverse effects of climate change. The aim of this study is to examine the factors influencing small scale poultry farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies to climate change. Data used for this study were obtained from 121 representative farmers selected through a two-stage random sampling procedure. Descriptive Statistics, Likert Scale and the Multinomial Logit Model were the tools used for analysis. Results showed that the mean age and household size of the respondents were 45 years and 5 persons respectively, while the average number of birds per farmer stood at 583 birds. Majority of the respondents had a moderate perception of the impacts of climate change on poultry farming and chose management adaptation strategies in their fight against climate change. Econometric analysis showed that the age, gender and educational status of farmers, number of birds, household size, poultry experience, access to cooperative societies, poultry housing system, access to credit, access to extension services and farm size were the factors influencing farmers’ choice of climate change adaptation strategies in the study area. Therefore, policy should focus on awareness creation on management adaptation strategies through enhancing education and extension services as well as access of poultry farmers to credit facilities to indirectly insure farmers against climate change impacts.

In order to assess the nature of climate change, it is important to analyse the indicators of climate variability in different scales: spatial and temporal. The analysis at different scales can lead to understanding of the nature of variations. Climate change studies are essential for comprehending the nature of global processes, to refine global climate patterns and also develop further research for natural processes (Meinke, Stone, 2005; Hulme et al., 1999). Processes in nature are united, continuous and in constant interaction. Variance of interaction types are immeasurable, types can be connected with different scales and science fields, for example, biological, ecological, physical etc. If interaction is taking place between the land and atmosphere, it is defined as hydrological interaction. As water is significantly important for many purposes on the Earth, it is relevant to analyse precipitation and water runoff on a local scale. In the territory of Latvia, the amount of precipitation exceeds the level of evapotranspiration. Long-term monitoring data show that precipitation leads to average runoff of 250 mm per year (Ziverts, 2004). The monitoring data collected at three research sites located in Latvia was used for this research including Berze (Lielupe river basin, meteorological station in Dobele), Mellupite (Venta river basin, meteorological station in Saldus monitoring) and Vienziemite (Gauja river basin, meteorological station in Zoseni). The results from this study show that there is a pronounced interaction between runoff and precipitation with an average of 53 to 82%.