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Climate-Smart Agriculture Practices and their Impact on Smallholder Farmers’ Resilience to Climate Change: The case of Gubalafto Woreda, Ethiopia

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dc.contributor.author sete, Melkamu
dc.date.accessioned 2026-09-04T07:31:07Z
dc.date.available 2026-09-04T07:31:07Z
dc.date.issued 2026-06
dc.identifier.uri http://ir.bdu.edu.et/handle/123456789/17321
dc.description.abstract Ethiopia, including the study area, is highly affected by drought, floods, erratic rainfall, and land degradation, which reduce agricultural productivity, threaten food security, and weaken rural livelihoods. As a result, many households continue to experience low resilience capacity and food insecurity. However, previous studies have provided limited evidence on resilience dimensions, the intensity of climate-smart agriculture adoption, and the synergies and tradeoffs among different climate-smart agriculture practices. Thus, this study aims to assess climate-smart agriculture practices and their impacts on smallholder farmers‘ resilience and food security in Gubalafto Woreda, Ethiopia. The study employed a quasi-experimental research design using a mixed-methods approach. Primary data were collected from 355 farm households and supplemented by 3 focus group discussions and 10 key informant interviews. The data were analyzed using principal component analysis, the food consumption score, the multidimensional food security index, the multivariate probit model, and the multinomial endogenous switching regression model. The top 5 climate-smart agriculture practices adopted by households were chemical fertilizers (50%), improved crop varieties (33%), small-scale irrigation systems (27%), agrochemicals (23%), and compost (22%). Conversely, about 30% of households did not adopt any top climate-smart agriculture practice. About 44% of the households were found to have a low resilience capacity index. Lowland households demonstrated a higher average resilience score than did midland and highland households, with p values of P<0.01. About 10.42% of households were classified as food secure, 60.28% as mildly food insecure, 23.1% as moderately food insecure, and 6.2% as severely food insecure. The partial, multiple, and full climate-smart agriculture adopters improved their resilience capacity by 7.4%, 12%, and 17%, respectively. Multiple- and full-package climate-smart agriculture practices were associated with 12.3% and 34.7% greater food consumption scores (food secure), respectively, while partial, multiple, and full adopters were achieving higher quality scores of 9.7%, 16.9%, and 13.2%, respectively. In contrast, households adopting multiple and full practices had 7.3% and 10% lower quantity scores. Small-scale irrigation shows a strong synergistic effect on both food security and resilience (0.99). Compost also has strong synergy, contributing to both food security (0.72) and resilience (0.74). In contrast, agrochemicals show a moderate positive effect on food security (0.38) but create a trade-off by reducing resilience (0.19). In conclusion, despite the high levels of food insecurity and low resilience in the study area, the adoption of diverse combinations of climate-smart agriculture practices was found to improve the food security and resilience of rural households. Therefore, relevant institutions should prioritize investments in communication infrastructure, institutional support services, and social safety nets. Particular emphasis should be placed on highland and midland agroecological zones, where household resilience capacities are relatively low. In addition, stakeholders should promote the adoption of diverse climate-smart agriculture practices to strengthen household food security and resilience capacity. en_US
dc.language.iso en en_US
dc.subject Disaster Risk Management and Sustainable Development en_US
dc.title Climate-Smart Agriculture Practices and their Impact on Smallholder Farmers’ Resilience to Climate Change: The case of Gubalafto Woreda, Ethiopia en_US
dc.type Dissartation en_US


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