Determinants of Smallholder Farmers’ Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability: The Case Study of Sire District, Arsi Zone, Oromia National Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Climate change is a worldwide issue that affects everyone livelihood.
Ethiopian agriculture is heavily dependent on nature and the country‘s
geographical location and topography in combination with low adaptive
capacity entail a high vulnerability to adverse impacts of climate change and
variability. The objectives in this study are to investigate smallholder
farmers‘ perception of climate change and to assess determinants of
adaptation strategies in Sire District. The study was followed a multi-stage
stratified random sampling procedure, where a combination of purposive and
random sampling technique were used to select respondents. A farm-level
data were collected from 126 households for 2015/16 cropping season and
1983-2011 period climatic data were obtained from Ethiopian
Meteorological Agency. The descriptive statistics results show that 90% of
the interviewed farmer‘s perceived long-term change in temperature over
1983-2011. The rainfall distribution data imply that high monthly rainfall
was recorded in July, August and September. The average annual minimum
and maximum temperatures of the study area follow increasing trends while
the rainfall data recorded from 1990 to 2011 show that the annual rainfall ollowed a decreasing trend over the period. For the perceived changes,
about 32%-35% of respondents took remedial actions to counteract the
impacts of climate change. The result of the logit model highlighted part of
determinants (such as sex of household (at 5% level with adjustment to
management option), education level, size of productive labor force, family
size, socio-economic group, tenure security, off-farm income and
agroecology) in line with the hypothesis, and other variables (such as age,
soil fertility and market distance) opposing the hypothesis, as main factors
that determines part of adaptations options. Then, based on the climate
change perceptions and main determinant factors of this study, a
corresponding government bodies and development practitioners should
create awareness, develop and implement climate smart agriculture and
strengthening farmers‘ adaptation and mitigation activities to survive the
impact of climate change and variability.