DETERMINANTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION STRATEGIES OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS: THE CASE OF KERSA DISTRICT, EAST HARARGHE ZONE, OROMIA, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Climate change causes a serious problem in Ethiopia where the majority’s livelihood depends on subsistence rain-fed farming system. Effective climate change adaptation strategies are the key to securing resilience of smallholder farmers’ livelihood system. Therefore, this study identified farmers’ choice and factors determining adaptation strategies to climate change in Kersa District, East Haraghe Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia, which has highly been affected by climate change pressure. For this study both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected from a randomly selected 329 sample households through interview and focus group discussions. Secondary data were collected from relevant published and unpublished sources. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the status of farmers’ adaptation strategies to climate change. Multivariate probit model was employed to identify the factors determining households’ adaptation strategies to climate change. Results showed that households use changing planting dates (15.2%), income source diversification (18.8%), droughts tolerant crop (16.9%), soil and water conservation participative (21.1%) and irrigation participative (19.1%) as climate change adaptation strategies. Further, the econometric model results indicated that the joint likelihood of using all adaptation strategies was only 19.1 % and the joint likelihood of failure to adopt all of the adaptation strategies was 5.6%. Furthermore, Multivariate probit model showed that sex of the household head, age of household head, education level of household head, access to credit, access to climate information, perception to climate change, off/non-farm income, family size, extension visit, livestock size, land size and distance to market have a statistically significant effects on smallholder farmers’ decision to use climate adaptation strategies. Therefore, government and other concerned bodies need to support farmers by providing the necessary resources such as credit, information to farmers on climate change adaptation strategies and technologies, along with investing in climate resilient projects by improving on existing or building new irrigation practice infrastructures.