Abstract
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a rapid, low cost and easily replicated approach to restore and improve degraded agricultural, forest and pasture lands. The study was conducted in low (500–1500 m.a.s.l) and mid (1500–2300 m.a.s.l) altitude agro-ecologies of Tigray region assessing farmer’s perception and reasons to practice FMNR. Purposive sampling was used to select three peasant associations (PA’s) from each agro-ecology. Simple random sampling was used to select respondents from household heads practicing FMNR. There were 15 respondents from each PA. Total respondents used for the study in both agro-ecologies were 90. All the data required for the study was collected through in-depth household survey and group discussions. Forty two percent (42.2%) of the respondents had 21–30 years of FMNR experience. Seventeen percent of the respondents with FMNR experience were from lowland and 26% were from mid land agro-ecology. FMNR has been practiced for more than two decades in the study areas. In both low and midland agro-ecologies, motivation of the respondents to practice FMNR was the training received from expert’s (37.1%) and neighbors’ success (29.2%). In the lowland, respondent’s main purpose to practice FMNR was fuel wood and fruit collection (49%) while in the midland the objectives were for fuel wood (50%), soil conservation (47%) and fodder (47%). FMNR has enormous importance in the livelihoods of the rural people especially in providing fuel wood, food/fruits, construction materials and farm equipment.
Highlights
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that the world is facing today (Gattinger et al 2011)
Exceptions to the rainfall pattern are areas in the southern zone and the highlands of the eastern zone, where there is a little rain during the months of March to mid-May; with more than 90% of the region being categorized as semi-arid region (Taffere 2003)
About 40% of the respondents had 21–30 years of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) experience in both agro-ecologies
Summary
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that the world is facing today (Gattinger et al 2011). Some studies suggests that by focusing more on natural productive systems, smallholder farmers in developing countries may combat climate change in providing improved ecological and social functions (Lott et al 2009), while meeting adaptation needs and building resilient agroecological systems that actively sequester carbon (Neupane and Thapa 2001). Both mitigation efforts to reduce GHG emissions and adaptation measures to maintain crop yields are of global importance (Harvey et al 2014). There are many ways to achieve sustainable agricultural intensification, there are few options where agro-ecosystem diversity and farm productivity are enhanced simultaneously (Koohafkan et al 2012)
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