Adoption of Soil and Water Conservation Practices in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Soil erosion must be reduced to a tolerable level to control soil fertility decline and sustainable agricultural development. Different SWC works have been done in many parts of Ethiopia. Still, the farmers' perception of soil erosion and their responses to soil and water conservation practices need investigation. Often contact between planners and stakeholders used to be minimal. The failure of conservation programs partly emerges from the fact that planners and implementing agencies ignore or fail to consider the socio-economic factors as critical determinants of the success or failure of conservation programs. Therefore, this study's objective was to identify what factors affect the adoption of physical soil and water conservation practices and examine farmers' perceptions of soil and water conservation practices. Both primary and secondary data were collected for this purpose. The primary data were collected from 108 proportionately and randomly selected sample households from 5 Kebeles in Kindo Koysha Woreda, while secondary data were from group discussions of different sources. A multinomial logit model was applied to identify the socio-demographic, Economic, Institutional, Psychological, and Physical factors that affect Soil and Water Conservation Practices' adoption. This study indicated that farmers' adoption of the Soil and Water Conservation decision was influenced more by socio-demographic, economic, institutional, and physical factors. The household head age, education levels, family size, and dependency ratio influenced socio-demographic factors; economic factors influenced farm size and household income. The slope category of the farm was of physical factor that influenced the adoption of soil water conservation practices. Of these significantly influenced variables, the dependency ratio was negatively affected, while the rest of the factors positively influenced the adoption of SWC practices. Based on the obtained result, the following recommendations were made: There should be a clear understanding of the socio-economic conditions of a given locality to undertake SWC activity; a closer relationship will need to be developed between land-use planners and soil conservationists; strengthening resettlement in unused areas; the way of farming culture has to be investigated before planning to undertake conservation activity of a given community; To implement SWC, exploring existing local resource and availability of farmland is vital because most farmers who have stones availability in their locality were replayed that they choose stone bunds to protect their farm.