Soil and water conservation intervention with conventional technologies in northwestern highlands of Ethiopia: Acceptance and adoption by farmers

Abstract

This study examines farmers’ acceptance and adoption of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies that were claimed by the implementing agency to have been executed in a farmer-participatory approach in a representative micro-watershed (the Digil watershed) in the north-western highlands of Ethiopia. Multiple methods of social research were employed to generate the data. The results reveal that involvement of the farmers was essentially limited to ‘participation by consultation’ and the farmers were rather persuaded to implement the conservation measures. A large majority of the farmers, however, acknowledged that the introduced conservation technologies were effective measures against soil erosion and for improving land productivity. Notwithstanding, the sustainable adoption and widespread replication of the technologies seemed unlikely. The major factors that were discouraging the farmers from adopting the technologies on their farms were found to be labour shortage, problem of fitness of the technologies to the farmers’ requirements and farming system circumstances, and land tenure insecurity. The study underscores that many of these problems were also basically related to lack of a genuine involvement of the farmers in the conservation effort and concludes by suggesting that future SWC interventions should carefully pursue a farmer-participatory approach.