ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION STRATEGIES OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS: THE CASE OF LEMO WOREDA, HADIYA ZONE, SNNPR, ETHIOPIA

Climate change causes a serious problem in Ethiopia in general and more so in the study area where people’s livelihoods depend on subsistence rain-fed farming. Effective adaptation to current changes in climatic condition is the key to securing food production and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the existing adaptation strategies and explore the determinants of the adaptation strategies choice of smallholder farmers in response to climate change at Lemo woreda of Hadiya zone in southern Ethiopia. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select the sample respondents. For this study, both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data were collected from 144 randomly selected households survey, focus group discussion and key informant interview whereas secondary data were collected from published and unpublished source of different governmental and non-governmental office. Descriptive statistic and Multivariate probit model were used to analyze the data. The result shows that the major climate change adaptation strategies in the study area include practice of soil and water conservation, using crops variety, use of afforestation, and use of improvising crop and livestock. The results of multivariate probit model on correlation coefficients of the error terms indicate that there is complementarily and substitutability between different adaptation options using by farmers. Also the model results confirm that the likelihood of households to adopt soil and water conservation, crop varieties, afforestation, and improving crop and livestock were 59.0%, 61.1%, 68.0% and 61.8%, respectively. The result also shows that the joint probability of using all adaptation strategies was 9.9% and the joint probability of failure to adopt all of the adaptation strategies was 0.7%. Multivariate probit model revealed that the household head age, sex, family size, education status, access to credit, farm size, distance from market center, access to training and livestock holding are among the significant determinants of choice of climate change adaptation strategies. To enable smallholder farmers in the study area to develop more effective climate change adaptation strategies, there is a need for governments support them through provision of access to education, access to training, better access to market, access to credit and improved livestock production