Practices and Adoption of Conservation Agriculture and its Implication on Food Secrutity in Assosa Woreda Benshangul Gumuz Region, West Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020-10
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Despite the recent efforts to increase agricultural productivity in Ethiopia, impact of agronomic
practices and soil degradation are the major challenge in agriculture. Mainly, conventional tillage
based crop production system is highly vurnurable to soil erosion and adverse impact of climate
variability. As a result, improving smallholders´agricultural productivity needs the adoption and
diffusion of suitable agricultural technology practices. Among these technology conservation
agriculture (CA) is being promoted as an option for reducing soil degradation and increase
production and productivity. By using socio-economic data of 378 sampled households, this study
analyzed level of adoption in terms of practicing the minimum tillage as a major and soil cover
and corprotation in combination. Accordingly, out of the total 346 (91.5%) of the farmers are CA
adoptors where as 32 (12.5%) of them are not adopting CA. The other intention of the study is to
know the kind of farm technology (tools) used by the farmers in practicing CA. The finding of the
study shows that 48.7% CA adopting farmers use combination of Hand hoe and Ox drawn plough.
Where as 34.7 % use only hand hoe. The observation, KII and FGD done shows that those farmers
who have a small plot of land are using hand hoe but as the land size increased farmers are insisted
to look for other option such as using ox drawn plough. The other objective of this study the
implication of CA on food security status of the CA practicing farmers. To see the implication
twelve month adequate food was used since it was easy tool that could be remembered easily by
the farmers. The result shows that 92% of the CA adopters responded that they had enough food
for the last 12 months where as only 12.5% of the respondants confirmed that they had 12 month
sufficient food. The food consumption score was also applied and result shows that about all the
CA adoptiong farmers 346 and 9 which (out of 32 non adopting ) are acceptable range while 19
(5%) of non adopting farmers are in borderline and the rest 7 non adopting farmers are in poor
level clasification. This shows that practicing practicing CA will have positive implication. help
the farmers to Accordingly, the food consumption score shows that 94% of the farmers are at
acceptable level of food security while 5% of them are at borderline and 1% are under ‘poor’
category. Regression done to see if the variables will determine the adoption of CA. As a result
education level, age, training , farmers field day participation, experience sharing participation,
listening to CA radio programing and being a member of garmers group has significantly
determine the level of CA adoption
Description
Keywords
Adoption, Conservation agriculture, Contribution, Assosa District