Elsevier

Land Use Policy

Volume 24, Issue 2, April 2007, Pages 404-416
Land Use Policy

Soil and water conservation intervention with conventional technologies in northwestern highlands of Ethiopia: Acceptance and adoption by farmers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2006.05.004Get rights and content

Abstract

This study examines farmers’ acceptance and adoption of soil and water conservation (SWC) technologies that were claimed by the implementing agency to have been executed in a farmer-participatory approach in a representative micro-watershed (the Digil watershed) in the north-western highlands of Ethiopia. Multiple methods of social research were employed to generate the data. The results reveal that involvement of the farmers was essentially limited to ‘participation by consultation’ and the farmers were rather persuaded to implement the conservation measures. A large majority of the farmers, however, acknowledged that the introduced conservation technologies were effective measures against soil erosion and for improving land productivity. Notwithstanding, the sustainable adoption and widespread replication of the technologies seemed unlikely. The major factors that were discouraging the farmers from adopting the technologies on their farms were found to be labour shortage, problem of fitness of the technologies to the farmers’ requirements and farming system circumstances, and land tenure insecurity. The study underscores that many of these problems were also basically related to lack of a genuine involvement of the farmers in the conservation effort and concludes by suggesting that future SWC interventions should carefully pursue a farmer-participatory approach.

Section snippets

Soil erosion and conservation in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, one of the poorest and most agrarian countries in the world, soil erosion is a major constraint to agricultural production and food security (Hurni, 1993; Bekele, 1997; Shiferaw, 1998; Zeleke, 2000; Tadesse, 2001; Sonneveld, 2002; Beshah, 2003; Bewket, 2003). The problem is more severe in the highlands (>1500 m and covering ∼45% of total area) where roughly 88% of the population lives and 95% of the regularly cultivated lands are found (FDRE, 1997; Bekele, 2003). A national level

The study site: the Digil watershed

The Digil watershed is located in Gozamen woreda (district), East Gojjam Zone, Amhara National Regional State. Situated at some 308 km distance northwest of Addis Ababa, the watershed forms part of the northwestern highlands of Ethiopia. It is representative of the cool sub-humid mid-highlands agroecological zone in the northwestern highlands of the country (MoA, 2000). The climatic condition is generally a sub-humid type. As measured at Debre-Markos (∼5 km from the site), mean annual temperature

The SWC intervention and farmers’ participation in the Digil watershed

SWC activities using conventional technologies were underway in the Digil watershed beginning early 1999. It was a 5-year resource management and development project undertaken by the local office of the agriculture ministry (Gozamen woreda office of agriculture) with financial support from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) as part of its on-farm research programme in the Amhara National Regional State. The objective of the intervention was not only to rehabilitate the

Discussion

A range of SWC technologies have been introduced in the studied watershed. The local farmers acknowledged that the technologies were effective measures against soil erosion and as having the potential to improve land productivity and lead to increased crop yields. Notwithstanding, the sustainable adoption and widespread replication of the technologies seemed unlikely. A major factor that was discouraging the farmers from adoption was that the introduced SWC technologies were not suitable to the

Conclusions

This study explores farmers’ acceptance and adoption of SWC technologies that were claimed by the implementing agency to have been executed in a farmer-participatory approach in the northwestern highlands of Ethiopia. The results reveal that the introduced SWC technologies were not suitable to the farmers’ requirements and farming system circumstances and the conservation strategy pursued was not truly farmer-participatory, suggesting that a sustainable adoption of the technologies is unlikely.

Acknowledgements

Financial support to this research was obtained from the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA). I am very grateful to all the farmers who took part in the survey. The paper has greatly benefited from comments and suggestions of the two reviewers of Land Use Policy; one of the reviewers, Dr. A. Kessler from Soil and Water Conservation Group, Wageningen University, kindly revealed his identity and helped me improve the discussion and conclusion sections.

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