Determinants of smallholder farmers' choice of coping and adaptation strategies to climate change and variability in the central highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

This study presents analysis of determinants of smallholder farmers’ choice of coping and adaptation strategies to climate change and variability in the central highlands of Ethiopia. A distinction was made between coping and adaptation, as short-term responses to shocks and long-term responses to stressors, respectively. Binary logistic regression modeling was used based on a survey of 200 farmers. Socio-demographic, economic, biophysical, and institutional and infrastructural characteristics of the study setting and sample households were considered to identify key determinants of farmers’ choice of coping and adaptation strategies. This is premised on the fact that understanding significant determinants of farmers’ choice of coping and adaptation strategies is useful to design impactful adaptation interventions in the locality. The results showed that the significant factors affecting choice of adaptation strategies include perceived soil fertility status, perception of land tenure security, access to extension service, and ages of household heads. For the choice of coping options, agroecological zone, access to markets, farmer-to-farmer extension, landholding size, access to information on climate change, rainfall amount, and educational level of household heads were the significant determinants. Agroecological zone had negative influence to use selling livestock as coping strategy while the other variables had positive influences on farmers’ choice of coping and adaptation strategies. Off-farm income, community participation, ownership of livestock and temperature on the other hand had no significant influence on the choice of coping and adaptation strategies to climate change. Adaptation planning for the study locality should take into account the potential influence of these determinant factors into account.