DETERMINANTS OF ADAPTATION STRATEGIES TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY BY SMALLHOLDER FARMERS OF CHIRO WOREDA

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 Secondary data were collected using available sources of information such as published and unpublished documents.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