**5. Discussion**

The socio-economic variables, such as age, gender, sex, marital status, access to credit, and assets, were the main factors determining the enhancement of resilience to agricultural drought. It is concerning that the average age of farmers was relatively high. It meant that fewer young people were farming and mostly joined other industries. This could be due to a lack of funding for start-up farmers and the negative stigmas surrounding agriculture as a career choice. This finding is supported by Meterlerkamp et al. [43], who found that one-third of young people show a positive attitude towards farming and choose agriculture as a career.

The male household heads spent more years in school than their female counterparts. This implied that the more educated and higher-skilled individuals were likely to be the least vulnerable to climate shocks such as agricultural drought. This is consistent with the finding of Brenda [44], who highlighted that, commonly, the more educated and higherskilled individuals of a household are likely to be the least vulnerable to climate shocks such as agricultural drought and have more adaptive capacity than less-educated farmers, because they could obtain information about climate change to assess their situation.

Gender and its impact on social and economic aspects are essential for decision making. It is clear that there is a gender imbalance in farming, agreeing with the study of Matlou and Bahta [45]. Marital status is critical in the determination of the level of involvement in farming. Married household heads can make better decisions during agricultural drought with the assistance of their partners. This finding is in line with a study by Ngeywo et al. [46], who found that the youth who dedicate their energy to farming as a business are denied a chance to do so, because they believe they are not responsible enough if they are not married.

Access to credit or funding is the main challenge for smallholder farmers in Africa, including South Africa. The findings indicated that only a few respondents had access to credit. This finding is in line with the study of Bahta et al. [47]. They highlight that access to credit enhances the working capital of households and resilience to agricultural

drought. The majority of the respondents depended on farming. Diversification of income helps to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers when shocks (such as agricultural drought) occur. However, a minority of farmers owned additional property; this indicated that most smallholder farmers were not resilient to shocks such as agricultural drought. These findings concurred with the findings of Maltou and Bahta [45].

Results from the ADRI indicated that the majority of the respondents were not resilient to agricultural drought. This suggests that smallholder livestock farmers need assistance from the government and different stakeholders in industry to enhance their resilience. The assistance could be feed for livestock (fodder), medication for livestock, strengthening access to agricultural credit and farm input, as well as enhancing smallholder farmers' involvement in agricultural drought resilience activities by giving training and disseminating information. This finding is in line with the study of Matlou and Bahta [45].

The structural equation modeling result indicated that assets, adaptive capacity, safety nets, and climate change indicators significantly impacted households' resilience to food insecurity. This implied that the more assets a farming household owned, the higher the resilience to agricultural drought. These findings are consistent with literature stating that having more assets may increase a household's resilience to food insecurity [11,13–16,48]. Further, the literature also indicates that resilience is the key to enhancing adaptive capacity [49].

The social safety net refers to benefits and protects vulnerable households from the risk of food insecurity. All the social safety net indicators (cash, training, food support, water rights, garden equipment, sanitary latrines, and farm input) had a positive and significant impact on households' resilience to food insecurity. The finding indicates that benefiting from the social safety net provides support for individual households. Our findings concurred with Mane et al. [50], Boukary et al. [11], Szabo et al. [48], and Shah and Dulal [51].

Climate change (drought occurrence and intensity) had a negative and significant impact on household resilience to food insecurity. Indeed, the Northern Cape climate is characterized by hot summers (between 34 ◦C and 40 ◦C) and cold winters (below zero nightfall temperatures and frost). Coupled with low rainfall (mean annual precipitation of 200 mm), the climate is consistently dry, which leads to the reduction of livestock production. The findings concur with Shah and Dulal [51], who indicated that a climate shock such as agricultural drought affects food production.
