Determinants of Adoption of Rainwater Harvesting Technology: The Case of Gursum District, East Hararghe Zone, Ethiopia

Nasir Siraj

doi:10.11648/j.ss.20170606.15

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the determinants of Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) technology adoption for irrigation and farmers practice in water harvesting against drought in Gursum district, Eastern Hararghe zone. The specific objectives were assessing farmer's perception towards the RWH technology and determining the major factors affecting adoption of RWH technology by smallholder farmers in the study area. The data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data for this study was collected from 150 farmers through application of appropriate statistical procedures while secondary data was gathered from various sources like zonal and district Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development and district of water bureau. This study has used multi-stage sampling technique in which both purposive and random sampling techniques were applied to select the required sampling units from the total population under study. Likert Scale was employed to measure the perception of respondents towards RWH technology, and binary logit model was used to analyse the factors that affect RWH technology. Both descriptive and econometric data analysis techniques were applied. Logistic regression estimation revealed that farm experience of household head, education level, family size, labor availability, distance to market, Total Tropical Livestock Unit (TTLU) perception and external support have significantly affected the RWH technology adoption decision of households in study area. The finding of this study indicated that any effort in promoting and adopting of RWH practice should recognize the socio-economic, technique, institutional, physical and psychological characteristics for better adoption of RWH technology. Taking the specific characteristics of farmers into account in introducing and promoting RWH may help policymakers to come up with projects that can easily accepted by farmers.

Highlights

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of the economically active population and it remains a very important social and economic sector
This study was initiated to identify factors affecting adoption of modern Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) technology currently introduced in Gursum district and farmers' perception towards the technology being promoted in the study areas
In the Logit model, a farmer who used any type of small catchment underground RWH technology is considered to be “an adopter”

Summary

Introduction

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of the economically active population and it remains a very important social and economic sector In this part of the world, rain-fed agriculture is largely dominant: food security and income of rural populations are vulnerable to rainfall variability and food production is often less than the requirements of growing population. More and more marginal areas in the world are being used for agriculture Much of this land is located in the arid or semiarid belts where rainfall is irregular and much of the precious water is soon lost as surface runoff. There is increasing interest in the country in the low cost alternative generally referred to as ‘water harvesting’ The latter refers to a practice of inducing, collecting, storing and conserving local surface runoff for agricultural production (Nigigi, 2003). This study was initiated to identify factors affecting adoption of modern RWH technology currently introduced in Gursum district and farmers' perception towards the technology being promoted in the study areas

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion