dc.description.abstract |
In Ethiopia agriculture is the backbone of national economy and source of
livelihood for most of the population. Despite its importance, the agricultural sector in
Ethiopia is characterized by low productivity due to soil nutrient depletion and low
external agricultural inputs. The main objective of this study was identifying the key
determinants farmers’ decision to adopt soil fertility management technology and its
effect the adopted technologies on rural households’ farm income in case of Dega
Damot district. The study was relying on cross-sectional data from 222 randomly
selected households from different agrocologies and key informant interviews. The
data were analyzed using Heckman two-stage models and simple descriptive statistics
using STATA software.
The first stage of probit regression results of the study show that the adoption
decision of soil fertility enhancing technology was driven by households’ age, farm
size, size of family, number of the labor force, position of land’ education, access to
credit, livestock, farm experience and awareness at a statistical significances. The
study finding confirmed that both partial and complete SFM adoption lead to
significant increases in farm income and net crop value. In moister kebele,
complementing improved varieties with inorganic fertilizer seems most important,
while in drier kebele enhancing it with organic fertilizer appears crucial. SFM is
related to higher labor force, but also significantly increases farm income. These
findings imply that SFM can contribute to improve farmers’ livelihoods by breaking
the nexus between low productivity, environmental degradation and poverty.
The second stage result show that soil fertility enhancing technology adoption
increases households farm income per timad. This implies that farmers should be
encouraged to adopt soil fertility enhancing technology. Therefore, the study
suggested that, the policies makers should be expanded the accessibility of credit
service, dissemination of productive agricultural technology information, and creating
opportunity of education for farm house hold has potential to increase soil fertility
enhancing technology adoption decision and strengthen the level of adoption among
smallholder farmers. |
en_US |