Adoption of Climate-smart Agricultural Practices Among Smallholder Farmers and Implications for Climate Change Adaptation in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change is a major concern for agriculture in East Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, with direct implications for smallholder farmers' incomes and food security. Despite the promotion of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) as a potential adaptation solution, there is a lack of rigorous evidence on its effectiveness in improving incomes and ensuring food security. This Thesis is aimed to examine the adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices by smallholder farmers in southern Ethiopia and study used data from 385 randomly selected households and historical meteorological data for the years 1983 to 2016. A Heckman probit two-stage selection model was also applied to examine the factors influencing farmers’ perceptions to climate change and their adaptation measures through adoption of CSA practices, which was supplemented by key informant interviews and focus group discussions. The propensity score matching approach with various types of matching algorithms was used to quantify the conditional effects of CSA intervention on income and food security. The results from the analysis of meteorological data showed that rainfall and temperature varied significantly across the study area. The survey findings indicated that a significant number of farmers (81.80%) observed a shift in the local climate. Specifically, 71.9% noted an increase in temperature, while 53.15% reported a decline in rainfall. Results also showed that farmers adaptation to climate change through adoption of CSA practices was influenced by level of education, family size, gender, landholding size, farming experience, access to climate information, social membership, livestock ownership, income, and extension services. The study also found that farmers’ perceptions of climate change and variability were significantly influenced by age of the farmers, level of education, farming experience, and access to climate information. In comparison to the food consumption score, farmers that adopted CSA practices had a higher food consumption score of 43.70, whereas non-adopters had 36.40. Furthermore, 34.55%, 44.68%, and 20.77% of all interviewed farmers were found to have acceptable, borderline, or poor categories of food consumption status, respectively. The study concluded that effective extension services, accurate climate information, and policy support are required to promote and scale up the uptake of CSA practices the study area to improve farmers’ adaptive capacity and food security and recommended that an enabling agricultural policy environment should be put in place to support the efforts of farmers to utilize CSA practices and technologies.