ADOPTION OF CLIMATE SMART AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THEIR IMPACTS ON VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE, FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY OF WHEAT FARMERS IN ARSI ZONE, OROMIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Climate-resilient crop production requires the use of crop technology that can sustainably increase productivity, decrease vulnerability, and improve resilience. Despite countrywide initiatives that promote climate smart agricultural technologies adoption, the rate of adoption has been extremely low. Similarly, the level of vulnerability varies significantly across households, nations, and regions. Moreover, although the 2030 agenda's aim of "zero hunger and malnutrition" has achieved tremendous progress, the prevalence of food insecurity and malnutrition is constantly rising worldwide. Thus, this study aims to analyze the climate smart agricultural technologies adoptions and their impact on reducing vulnerability and building resilience to climate change, improving food and nutrition security of smallholder wheat farmers in Arsi zone. Towards this, plot-level primary data were gathered from 628 plots that were managed by 422 randomly selected wheat-producing smallholder farmers in three selected districts of the Zone. Descriptive statistics and econometric models including the multivariate probit model, the binary logit model, the ordered logit model, and the multinomial endogenous switching regression(MNESR) were used to analyze the data. Among the major climate smart agricultural technologies adopted for wheat production in the study area, this study considered improved wheat varieties, integrated soil fertility management, and irrigation technologies. The result indicated that improved wheat varieties, integrated soil fertility management, and irrigation technologies were adopted on 95%, 85%, and 19% of the wheat plots, respectively. The result of the MVP revealed that farmers with higher levels of education, farming experience, and contact with extension workers, have credit access, are members of social organizations, have access to market information, have greater annual total income, and are closer to the nearest market center and wheat farm are more likely to adopt climate smart agricultural technologies in wheat production. The result of vulnerability as expected poverty (VEP) pointed out that 60.66% of the sample households were vulnerable to climate change while the remaining 39.34% were not. In addition, the sample household’s average resilience index was found to be 0.976 as revealed by the result of the resilience index measurement approach (RIMA). In a similar vein, the absorptive capacity (0.401) was the primary contributor among the resilience components, followed by the adaptive (0.320) and transformative (0.255) capacities. The result from the logit model pointed out that households that participated in off-farm income-generating activities, had large areas of farmland and owned large numbers of livestock, had frequent contact with extension workers, had access to improved wheat varieties and irrigation, lived in highland agroecology and participated in social organizations was probably less susceptible to climate change. The food and nutrition security status were measured, respectively, using the household calorie acquisition score and household dietary diversity score. Descriptive statistics showed that whereas 29.15% of the sample households were food insecure, 70.85% of the households were secure in their food. Similarly, low, medium, and high nutritional levels were discovered in 26.07%, 52.61%, and xviii 21.33% of the sample families, respectively. The binary logit model's result showed that while family size and distance from the market were negatively associated with the likelihood of food security, livestock holding, frequency of extension contact, chemical fertilizer, irrigation, and vegetation coverage were positively associated with it. The ordered logit results indicated that while the distances to the market and health center were negatively associated with household nutritional status, the level of education, participation in safety-net programs, total income, farm size, market information, and soil fertility had positive and significant effects. The impact of adopting climate smart agricultural technologies on the vulnerability and resilience to climate change, and food and nutrition security of wheat farmers were analyzed using the MNESR model. The result revealed that the adoption of climate-smart agricultural technologies has a positive and significant impact on reducing vulnerability and improving wheat farmers’ resilience to climate change, improving food and nutrition security in the study area. Moreover, the highest impact is attained when wheat farmers adopt a combination of climate-smart agricultural technologies than in isolation. Hence, expanding the implementation of climate- smart agricultural technologies can lower vulnerability to climate change, increase resilience to it, and improve the food and nutrition security of smallholder wheat farmers.