PERCEPTIONS OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS ON POTENTIAL ROLES OF CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE FOR FOOD SECURITY AND CLIMATE CHNGE ADADPTATION IN LOKA ABAYA DISTRICT, SIDAMA ZONE, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The study assessed the Perceptions of smallholder farmers on the potential roles of conservation agriculture (CA) for food security and adaptation to climate change. A combination of multi stage purposive and simple random sampling techniques was employed to get a total of 144 sample respondents’. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data were collected by interviewing 144 smallholder household heads, focus group discussions which had total of 10 focus groups with 2 focus group in each Kebeles having 6 household head members in each group, and 32 key informants, which included 10 DAs, 20 elders and 2 officials from district. The secondary data were collected from National Metrological Agency of Ethiopia for 30 years. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics like mean, standard deviation, maximum, minimum, percentage, Chi-square and independent T-test to identify variables that vary significantly between groups and Econometrics such as binary logistic regression model and multiple linear regressions by SPSS version 20. To assess the contribution of CA on food security among smallholder households, the study compared estimated production function between adopters and non- adopters of CA by using Cob-Douglas production function. Secondly, the study used descriptive statistics to assess the roles of CA on climate change adaptation and finally, a binary logistic regression model was used to determine factors that affected the adoption of CA among smallholder farmers. The results showed significant difference in the number of years of schooling, availability of CA training, and access to extension services, soil fertility status, and availability of CA incentives among interviewed households. The results revealed that adoption of CA technology improved household’s maize productivity by 45% than those who practiced non-CA. Cobb-Douglas production estimates showed that CA adopters had more than 45% higher maize productivity than that of non-adopters. In addition, there were greater than proportionate unit increases in maize yield with unit increase in land size and labor among CA adopters. According to the reports of respondents, CA enhanced adaptation capacity to the impacts of climate change for adopter than non adopters by increasing soil fertility, reducing production costs (cost of labor and chemical fertilizer) by 94.5%, reducing soil erosion by 80.6%, enhancing soil moisture saving capacity by97.2%, increasing yield and improving crop resilience to the impacts of climate change by 75% in the study area. From the binary logistic regression model results, access to CA training, increase in the number of extension visits, availability of CA incentives, increase in soil fertility increased the adoption of CA technology by 86.98%, 24.8%, 21.1% and 7.0% respectively. The study recommends that there should be improvement in the access to informal elder education, informal training and field demonstration to improve and enhance the acquisition and understanding of CA technology components. Furthermore, adopter households who had better extension service have 45% greater maize yield, 90.3% of them have year round available food stock and 80.6% of them feed themselves three to four times per a day compared to non adopters households and this also helped them to adapt to climate change, to be food secured, and for this reason, there should be increase in good extension services in the promotion and dissemination of CA technology. This can be achieved by increasing number of extension workers operating in the areas and increase number of demonstrations when introducing CA technology to farmers.