Climate change adaptations of smallholder farmers in South Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

The negative impact from the climate change has been striking the agriculture sector in Africa. For countries like Ethiopia, whose livelihood occupation of the nation is mainly based on subsistence agriculture that highly rely on rainfall, making an adjustment to adapt to the changing situation is crucial. Therefore, designing context specific adaptation strategies are essential to moderate the negative effect of climate change. This study was intended to answer how farmers perceive climate change, what adaptation measures are farmers practicing in their area and factors influencing adaptation to climate change. Four stage sampling procedure was followed in selecting the study Woreda, villages and representative respondents. Accordingly, 3 villages and 160 household heads were selected using simple random sampling and systematic sampling, respectively. In addition to the secondary data, structured interview schedule was developed, pre-tested and used for collecting quantitative data. The model result depicted the strong and positive association relation between the combined measures of agronomic practices and use of agricultural inputs with education, access to weather information, access to credit and farm income. Similarly, sex of the household head and access to weather information were found to significantly affect the choice decision of adoption of inputs and agronomic practices like use of drought tolerant crop species and crop diversification measures. Therefore, government policies on climate change adaptation program should be given due emphasis to in enhancing the adaptive capacity of the farming society through improving the provision of credit, promoting adult education, and enhancing means of income generation in the rural areas.   Key words: Climate change, adaptation measures, adaptation strategies, smallholders.