ADOPTION OF AGROFORESTRY PRACTICES IN MANA WOREDA OROMYIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Significant information on agroforestry practices for natural resource management as well as factors affecting adoption of these practices by farmers in Mana woreda, Oromyia region, is scant. Therefore, this study is conducted with the objective to assess adoption major agroforestry practices by farm household. Primary data employed in this study was obtained from 184 randomly selected sample households. Multi-stage random sampling procedure was employed to select the sample farm household heads. The data was gathered using a structured interview, focus group discussions, observation, case study and key informants interviews, were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Inferential and descriptive statistics such as T-test and chi-square tests were also used to test hypothesis. The survey result shows that major agroforestry practices by the adopter include home garden, boundary planting and woodlot. The farmers’ perception to agroforestry practices were vary and significant at (p<0.01) probability level. The contributions of annual incomes from tree products for adopter and non-adopter were 2949.90 and 2747.17 ETB, respectively. While income from crop were 2580.16 and 2530.97 ETB and livestock 1994.18 and 2341.30 ETB. This indicates the contribution of income from tree products was very high as compare crop and livestock. Reason provided in the survey could be considered as major constraints to adoption of agroforestry practice were like lack of enough farm size, pests and drought influence the adoption of agroforestry practices more than other factor. Before running the binary logit model all the hypothesized explanatory variables were checked for the existence of multi-collinearity problem. Finally binary logistic regression models were fitted to analyze the potential variables that affecting adoption of agroforestry practices. Among 15 explanatory variables included in the logistic model, age and perception to agroforestry practices were significantly affected adoption at (p<0.01) were as education, erosion and sex were significant at (p<0.05) level. Results of the logistic regression analysis indicate that the households’ sex, perception, educational levels and erosion affect the adoption of agroforestry practice positively while age affect negatively. So for these variables need to be considered initiatives by government and non-governmental organizations to promote agroforestry practice as a strategy to realize integrated rural development in the study areas