Abstract:
Land degradation and frequent drought have been identified as the most serious problems
that threaten the sustainability of agriculture and economic growth in Ethiopia. Watershed
management was taken as the basic operational unit to rehabilitate degraded watershed and
improve agricultural productivity. The Recent year WSM practice of Ethiopia has abled to
alleviate physical intervention. This in turn has becoming a means for poverty alleviation
initiatives and income generating activities. Hence, the major concern of this study was to
analyze the impact of watershed management on household income and crop productivity in
Enebse-Sarmider worereda Amhara regional state. To meet this objective, a total of 231
sample households constituting 130 from untreated watershed area and 101 from treated
watershed area were randomly selected from three watershed areas. Both primary and
secondary data were collected and analyzed using SPSS version 20 and STATA 13 software.
Descriptive statistics with appropriate statistical tests and propensity score matching (PSM)
were used to analyze data. The descriptive result shows that watershed management has
significant benefit to the target group. The main benefits are cut and carry system, tree/wood
production, fruit production, bee keeping, and improvement in water availability and
agroforestry. Besides, the study results show that, watershed management has a positive
contribution to natural resource conservations, crop-livestock production and productivity
and household's income escalation. Results from the propensity score matching shows that
developed watershed has statically significant contribution in households' income
improvement. This study showed that households that reside in treated area have increased
their annual income by 11165.03 birr than untreated households per year. Therefore, in
agriculture dependent country like Ethiopia, soil and water conservation is crucial in
improving the livelihoods of the rural farm households. However, to realize the intended
outcomes, agro-ecology specific technologies that are linked with natural resource
management based income generating activities shall be promoted.