Small-scale irrigation (SSI) farming as a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practice and its influence on livelihood improvement in Offa District, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Small-scale irrigated farming has been offered as a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technology to boost production and diversify livelihood scenarios as an option to mitigate climate change. This study was to analyse factors that influence smallholder farmers' decisions to adopt small-scale irrigation (SSI) as CSA and to assess the influence of adoption on livelihood improvement. To obtain relevant data, the study employed a mixed research methodology that combines an explanatory research design with a qualitative approach. A total of 134 respondents were selected for the study's sample size. A mixed research methodology was used in this study to acquire pertinent data, which incorporated an explanatory research design and a qualitative approach. In the study area, 37.3% participated in small-scale irrigation, while 62.7% did not. The descriptive statistics result showed that, household socio-demographic factors; household socio-economic factors, and household institutional factors had significantly and statistically affect the adoption SSI. The Logit regression model results revealed that households; who owned more land holding size, access to credit services, get agricultural extension service, who near to the district market, who have middle age of HH, who Sex of HHH, who nearest farm sight, have TLU, have farming experience, have access to irrigation, and have good health status of the HHH were more likely to benefit from the use of small scale irrigation. The average annual gross income earned by participant and non-participant households from various crops in the three schemes was 370,190 and 83,983 ETB, respectively. As a result, participation in small-scale irrigation has a positive effect on the majority of household livelihood diversification, and expanding irrigation schemes improves rural farm households' livelihoods. As a result, policymakers and other stakeholders should prioritize small-scale irrigation technologies as CSA to improve rural household livelihoods.