Abstract
About 96% of African agriculture is rain-fed and more than 87% of Ethiopian poor live in rural areas and are dependent on rain-fed agriculture that makes it prone to various weather-related shocks and stresses. Climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and interventions are being implemented to meet the challenges of changing climate. Despite several CSA practices are practiced by smallholder farmers in different parts of Ethiopia, their role to agricultural productivity and household income in the study area are not well studied.
The main objective of this study was to assess the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices and their impact on crop productivity and households’ income in the district. The study followed a multi-stage sampling procedure to select 147 households (84 adapters and 63 non-adopters) in three rural kebeles. Interviews, group discussions, key informants, and field observation tools were employed to collect data. The data analysis was carried out by descriptive, inferential statistics and binary logistic model. Inventory results showed that soil and water conservation practices, crop type diversification, crop rotation with legumes, preparation of organic fertilizer, agroforestry, improved crop varieties, changing planting date were the major CSA practices implemented in the study area. Due to the implementation of CSA practices the mean productivity of main crops has been significantly increased. The increase in productivity for adopters compared to non-adopters for maize, teff, wheat, barley, potato, and legume crops was 16.97%, 2.70%, 12.62%, 22.05%, 5.23%, and 28.17% respectively. The increased in crop productivity increased -the mean income of CSA adopters to 44988.9ETB as compared to the lower-income of non-adopters with 33671.4 ETB. This result showed an increase in income by 33.6% because of CSA practices implementation in the area. The result from the binary logit analysis showed that education level, access to extension service, training, demonstration sites, tropical livestock unit (TLU), and access to credit services have a significant and positive influence on the adoption of CSA technologies. But the dependency ratio has a negative and significant effect. It is concluded that CSA practices can play a significant role to enhance the household’s productivity and income which can reduce the impacts of climate change. Finally, it is recommended that Government and non-government organizations should work on farmers to increase awareness and participation in CSA practices.
Keywords: Adoption, Bibugn, Climate-smart agriculture, Factor, Sustainable land management
