Abstract

Land degradation mainly caused by soil erosion, and shades an ominous threat to the livelihood development prospects of Ethiopian smallholder farmers. In response to this, the government of Ethiopia introduced a Sustainable Land Management Program (hereafter referred as ‘SLM’), even though the adoption by smallholder farmers has been low. This study aims to analyze the factors that influence the adoption of SLM practices choices using primary data collected from 200 smallholder farmers. Both descriptive statistics and Multivariate Probit model were applied. The multivariate probit model revealed that the main factors that positively and significantly influenced the decision of farmers to use these SLM practices are the household size, livestock holding size, amount of total income, level of education, the slope of farm plot, extension services and use of credit, the status of soil erosion hazard. However, distance to the nearest market had a negative and significant effect on adoption of SLM practices choices in the study area. The study recommended that the regional and local government should design various specific programs to resolve the constraints for scaling up and adopting the SLM practices through facilitating additional income-earning activities, encouraging the use of labor-saving technologies, promoting modern livestock production system, increasing farmers’ literacy level, promoting soil conservation techniques, widening the rural microfinance intuition services and establishing near market information provision center in the study area.

Key words: Smallholder farmers, adoption, Sustainable Land Management (SLM), multivariate Probit, Abay Basin.