Abstract:
Climate variability is a widespread challenge affecting many parts of the world It has
adverse consequences on the world’s ecosystems, economies, and societies. Ethiopia is
heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and its geographical location and topography
in combination entail a high vulnerability to adverse impacts of climate variability. The
specific Objectives of this study was to assess the perception of smallholder farmers on the
climate variability, the effect of climate variability on the livelihood of smallholder
Households and to identified factors that determine the choice of adaptation strategy by
smallholder farmers in respond to climate variability. To attain thesis objectives, the data
required for the study was obtained from both primary and secondary sources. The
primary data has been collected through questionnaire, interview, focused group
discussion and personal field observation. Secondary data were collected using available
sources of information such as published and unpublished documents. The binary logistic
regression model and Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The binary
logistic regression model on its part was used to identify factors that affect smallholder
farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies. Purposive and simple random sampling methods
were used to select three kebele and 164 Household respondents respectively. The result
show that the main factors that determine Adaptation strategy in the study area were
distance nearest to the market from farmers resident, access to extension, family size,
training, off-farm income, ,smallholders area of farm parcels, credit services, house hold
income and family size were significant influence household heads decision to adopt best adaptation option for adaptation strategy. Based on the results, it recommended that
strengthening existing off farm income benefit schemes and creating others benefit related
to the agriculture product based income generating activities, which helps to strength their
adaptation option. Therefore, recommended that to improve farmers’ adaptation strategy,
trading and Extension service play a vital role by providing information and developing
skill to local farmers
