Climate change and variability have direct negative impacts on rural smallholder farmers. These impacts involve extreme climatic events such as excessive temperatures, prolonged droughts and floods which affect people’s livelihoods. This study was conducted in Nkomazi Local Municipality, Mpumalanga, South Africa. The main objective of the study was to investigate indigenous weather and climate indicators used by smallholder farmers and the role of indigenous knowledge in their farming systems. The research used qualitative methods, including focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The findings indicated that farmers observed animal behaviour, plants, atmospheric indicators and human ailments to predict weather.

Throughout the years, long before the introduction of modern climate science, indigenous knowledge has been the backbone for rural smallholder farmers. For centuries farming continued successfully as a livelihood source for most smallholder farmers. These farmers had indigenous ways of using nature for gathering, predicting and interpreting weather conditions. The natural indicators involved the observation of animal behavior, plants, clouds, and moon. However, indigenous knowledge systems have become unpredictable due to climate variability and change. These effects have negatively influenced rural smallholder farmers' livelihoods and posed a massive threat to their food security due to high reliability on natural resources for agricultural production. Delayed extension services and reliability on gathering climate information from extension officers has been another challenge. This review, therefore, seeks to highlight the importance and the contribution of these two knowledge systems, and how they can be integrated to help sustain rural smallholder farmer's livelihoods.

This study aimed at smallholder farmers to use their indigenous knowledge in combination with modern climate indicators when making farming decisions in Nkomazi Local Municipality, South Africa. Twelve villages were sampled in Nkomazi municipality based on their use of IKS with 100 participants applying both qualitative and quantitative research methods. ArcMap v10.7.1 software was used to map the distribution of indigenous climate indicators in these villages, and SPSS v25.0 software was used to analyse the quantitative data. Qualitative data was analysed through thematic analysis which is used to interpret patterns of meaning within qualitative data. The most used indicators smallholder farmers relied on for weather predictions included animals (31%) followed by plants (26%). The Poynton model predicted negative results with a 5⁰C temperature increase, meaning that if the hot temperatures continue rising, the farmers' indigenous indicators will decline or disappear, making it difficult for rural smallholder farmers to make informed farm-level decisions. Therefore, the study suggests an integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and local knowledge to adapt to climate change, have access to updated agricultural information and ability to make informed farm-level decisions.

This study aimed to help smallholder farmers to use their indigenous knowledge in combination with modern climate indicators when making farming decisions in Nkomazi Local Municipality. The Poynton model was used to predict the distribution of the plant and animal indicators if the temperature continues to rise by at 50C. Twelve villages were sampled with 100 participants applying both qualitative and quantitative research methods. ArcMap 10.7.1 was used to map the distribution of indigenous climate indicators in these villages, and SPSS 25.0 was used to analyse the quantitative data. Qualitative data was analysed through thematic analysis. Mostly used indicators smallholder farmers relied on for weather predictions included animals (31%) followed by plants (26%). The Poynton model predicted negative results with a 50C temperature increase, meaning that if the hot temperatures continue rising, the farmers' indigenous indicators will decline or disappear, making it difficult for the rural smallholder farmers to make informed farm-level decisions. These are the negative effects climate change has on rural smallholder farmers. Therefore, the study suggests an integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and modern science to adapt to climate change, have access to updated agricultural information and ability to make informed farm-level decisions.