dc.description.abstract |
Taking of agriculture as the sole means of income generation activities is difficult to lives of rural
households. This is because diminishing returns of productivity over time. Due to this factual reason,
focusing on livelihood diversification in off-farm and non-farm activities as a primary or
supplementary source for rural household’s livelihoods becomes vital. The main purpose of this study
was the assessment of rural households’ livelihood diversification in off-farm and non-farm activity to
support households’ livelihood in Fogera district, north western Ethiopia which is mainly dominated
by rain fed agriculture. A cross-sectional study design was used. Data were collected from randomly
selected 192 households by using semi-structured interview seclude and key informative interview
guides. The descriptive statistics was used to identify challenges and types of off-farm and non-farm
activities. Similarly, inferential statistics such as independent sample t-test and chi-square test were
applied to identify association and relationship among diversified and not diversified groups. A binary
logistic regression was used to identify determinants of households in engaging diversified income
generating activities. Results from descriptive statistics indicates that lack of knowledge, lack of
capital, lack of market information, lack of credit access and lack of infrastructure were the wellknown identified challenges in the study area. Because of these challenges, only 28.6 percent of the
household engaged in diversified household livelihood diversification activities. The binary logistic
regression result revealed that educational status of rural household heads, access to training, access
to credit, and household size were significant determinants influenced livelihood diversification of
households. From this study the basic factors which influenced the livelihood diversification activities
were household’s demographic and institutional characteristics plus challenges in related to
knowledge, information, capital and access to infrastructure to engage in diversification. Thus in
improvement of education in sustainable way, creating on credit access, easily accessing market
information, providing training in relation to income generating activity and ensuring infrastructure
service facility are the most imperative tools for rural households to participate in off-farm and nonfarm activities.
KEYWORDS: Diversification; livelihood; farming; off-farm, non-farm, income generating |
en_US |