Climate variability and the responses of crop yields to agricultural drought in the East Wollega Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia have been facing severe climate related hazards; droughts and floods that negatively affect their livelihoods. This study was aimed to assess climate variability and the responses of crop yields to climate induced agricultural drought. Time-series crop yields (1993-2018) and climate data (1989 to 2019) was obtained from Central Statistical Agency and NASA’s portal respectively. The changes in temperature and precipitation were analyzed using Mann Kendall trend test. The agricultural drought index was analyzed using R-software. The correlation between the selected yield crops and drought indices were evaluated using Pearson correlation coefficient. Determinants on climate change adaptation strategies were assessed using a multinomial logit model. The trends of seasonal and annual minimum temperatures and spring maximum temperature results were significantly warmed up (P <0.05).However, both seasonal and annual rainfall was slightly decreased. Moderate to severe agricultural drought intensities happened 7 times and one very wet year occurred during three decades. As the result, about 0.70% of the total land area was affected by moderate drought while about 30.73% of the land area was affected by moderate wet soil moisture and 68.57% of the rest others were observed as harmless land areas. The Person’s correlation coefficients showed that crop yields due to the drought interruption were 93.9, 92.4, and 92.5% for maize, wheat, and finger millet, respectively. Determinants depicted that sex, family size, extension, and education were significantly affected soil and water conservation practice and tree planting at (P <0.05). Therefore, the efforts of local government and stakeholders should be superior to build the capacity of farmers to use appropriate agricultural technologies and supply drought & wet tolerant crop varieties; improve research and development programs.