Background: Sustainable land management is considered as one of the useful approaches to combat the threat of various forms of land degradation in Ethiopia. Despite this, there is scant information regarding households' decision towards the implementation of sustainable land management practices. This paper, therefore, looks into the determinants for the continued use and choice of the sustainable land management practices by smallholder farmers and its productivity effect in three randomly chosen districts in Tigrai region, Ethiopia. The study uses data from household survey and key informant interviews. The paper employs a binary logit to analyze the determinants for the decision of continued use of sustainable land management practices, and a multivariate probit to analyze the simultaneous adoption decision of sustainable land management practices using cross sectional data collected from 230 randomly selected households. The impact of sustainable land management practices was also evaluated using propensity score matching. Results: Farming techniques, wealth status, agro-ecological variations, and plot level characteristics were found to be associated with the implementation decision of sustainable land management practices by rural households. Besides, institutional supports and access to basic infrastructures influenced the overall continued use of sustainable land management practices and the preference of households toward these practices. The study also finds that the value of crop production of sustainable land management users was on average 77-100% higher than that of nonusers. Conclusions: The results of the current study confirm that the implementation of various sustainable land management practices are influenced by farming technologies deployed by rural households, agro-ecological variations, plot characteristics, and institutional supports. The findings also affirm that most of the sustainable land management practices are complementary to one another, and implementing two or more sustainable land management practices on a given plot is highly associated with higher value of crop production. Such complementarity highlights that the productivity effect of a given sustainable land management practice is enhanced by the use of the other ones.

Background The livelihood of rural households in Ethiopia, like in most developing countries, largely depends on land resource. However, nowadays most rural households are denied access to arable land in the highland of Ethiopia due to high population growth and shortage of arable land. Landlessness is, therefore, becoming a serious social and economic problem in the rural highland areas of Ethiopia in general and Tigrai region in particular. This study, therefore, intends to explore the choice of livelihood strategies of landless rural households and assess the challenges and opportunities of the livelihoods of landless rural households in selected districts of Tigrai region. Methods This study is conducted in three randomly selected districts of Tigrai region, namely, Kilte-Awlaelo, Degua-Tembien, and Hintalo-Wajerat districts. For the purpose of this study, two Tabias were randomly chosen from each districts. Then, afterward, both primary and secondary data sources were consulted to address the specific objectives of this study. The primary data were collected from 258 randomly selected households and six focus group discussions. This study used Multivariate Probit and Negative Binomial Regression to analyze factors influencing the choice of livelihood strategies and the number of livelihood options adopted by the landless rural households, respectively. Results This study finds that the livelihood sources of the landless rural households in the study area include farm (90%), non-farm (72%), and off-farm (41%) economic activities. The result of the Multivariate Probit regression indicates that household head characteristics, human capital, social capital, physical capital, financial capital, and institution-related factors were significantly influencing the choice of livelihood strategies of the landless rural households. The results of the negative binomial regression model, on the other hand, assert that household head-related factors, social capital, and institution-related factors were significantly influencing the number of livelihood options adopted by the landless rural households. This study affirms that stone or sand selling, dairy farming, poultry production, animal fattening, and bee keeping are the major opportunities to improve the livelihood of the landless rural households. Moreover, this study also identifies that shortage of arable land, youth unemployment, lack of access to infrastructure, poor land administration, and lack of access to financial capital were the major challenges facing the landless rural households. Concluding remarks This study concludes that all stakeholders efforts to address the problem of landlessness need to be geared to enhance access of landless rural households to different livelihood capitals, such as human, social, financial, physical, and natural capitals. Moreover, rural township and village enterprises could enhance the access of landless rural households to market and job opportunities.