Climate change adaptation: a study of multiple climate-smart practices in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia

Abstract

Improving farm-level use of multiple climate change adaptation strategies is essential for improving household food security, particularly against a backdrop of a high risk of climatic shocks. However, the empirical foundation for understanding how farm households choose multiple climate-smart practices is far from being established. In this paper, the effects of household, farm and climatic factors on farmers' decisions to use multiple adaptation practices are analysed. A survey of 921 farm households and 4312 farm plots combined with historical climate data in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia is explored using multivariate and random effect ordered probit econometric models. Results show agricultural production can be characterized by complementarities between adaptation practices. This result is important to designing packages of adaptation practices. The econometric results confirm that social capital, tenure security and climatic shocks are important determinants of the choice of the type and number of adaptation practices. The results suggest the need for carefully designing combinations of adaptation strategies based on agro-ecological conditions.

Understanding the Interdependence and Temporal Dynamics of Smallholders’ Adoption of Soil Conservation Practices: Evidence from Nigeria

“…This suggests that farmers do consider expected climatic conditions, especially rainfall in their choice of crop management practices and this is plausible because the production system is fully rain-fed. This is largely consistent with previous studies, e.g., [15,26,39] that show that rainfall influences farmers' adoption decisions in relation to conservation practices. Also, the result supports the findings of [13] where rainfall was found to significantly increase the probability of adoption of crop rotation, but reduced the probability of adoption of intercropping.…”

“…[26] found that membership of association influenced farmers' decision to adopt soil conservation practices. Consistent with our results, [39] found out that the ownership of mobile phones did not significantly influence the likelihood of adoption of soil conservation practices. Meanwhile, [69] found that the number of contacts with extension agent significantly influenced farmers' decision to adopt climate-smart practices.…”

“…We also considered the conditional probabilities in the adoption of the various conservation practices in the study area (Table A1 in the Appendix A). The results show that the conditional probabilities in the adoption of the practices were significantly greater than the unconditional probabilities, suggesting greater complementarity and less substitution among the practices in both 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons [39,56]. Figure 3 shows the distribution of the number of conservation practices adopted by the farming households in 2016 and 2017 cropping seasons.…”

“…In explaining the number of soil conservation practices adopted by the farmers, it is often difficult to establish a clear difference between adopters and non-adopters [20,26]. Poisson regression can be used, assuming we take the number of soil conservation practices adopted as a count variable [39]. However, doing so assumes an equal probability of adoption of each alternative conservation practice.…”

“…Most previous studies on the adoption of conservation practices in Nigeria, e.g., [32][33][34][35], and some parts of SSA, e.g., [36][37][38], examine the adoption of soil conservation practices in terms of a single conservation practice and not multiple practices. This typically ignores the fact that multiple conservation practices may be interrelated and interdependent, and can be influenced by factors relating to their complementarity (synergistic effects) and substitutability (trade-off effects) possibilities [23,26,39]. In addition, most of the documented studies do not consider inter-temporal (year-to-year) variability in the adoption of such soil conservation practices, and the underlying factors that explain the adoption decisions of smallholder farmers across spatially representative production areas.…”