Abstract:
A number of factors determine smallholder household’s decision to the choice of adaptation
strstegies to the effects of climate change. There is a lack of empirical studies on local level
assessemnet and individual farm household demographic, socio-ecnomic and institutional
characteristics to identify the effects of climate change and determinants of choice of adaptation
strategies practiced by smallholder farm households in specific local context, such as the study
area. A formal survey was administred to collect primary quantitative and qualitatative data from
161 randomly selected smallholder farm households. In addition to FGDs, KII, field observation
and secondary data review were used to collect qualitative data. This study used descriptive and
explanatory research designs, while while descriptive and inferential statistics and, econometric
analytical model were adopted for data analysis. This study identified total of fourteen (14) effects
of climate change that exert impact on agriculture, human and livestock health, and environment.
The findings showed fourteen (14) adaptation strategies that smallholder farm households practice
in the study area. Four (4) categories of choice sets of adaptation strategies were used for
multinomial logistic regression (MNLR) model parameters. As a result, the MNL model estimated
the effect of fourteen (14) explanatory variables related to household’s demographic, socio ecnomic and institutional characteristics. From which, eight (8) predictor variables were found
statistically significant to positively and negatively determine household’s decision to the choice of
adaption strategies, significant at 1% and 5% probability level. Namely, family size (AL), farm
experience (years), land size (ha), livestock holding (TLU), membership in informal institutions,
access to credit, farm inputs used and access to extension service. Public and community
developent institutions are expected to design and implement appropriate intervention(s) to
enhance the adaptive capacity of smallholder households towards the negative impacts of change
climate in the study area. Furthermore, strengthening institutional support services help to improve
the capacity of small-scale farm households withstand effects of climate change in their locality.
