Smallholder Farmer's Adaptability to Anthropogenic and Climate-Induced Variability in the Dhidhessa River Sub-basin, Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia depends on rain-fed agriculture with limited use of irrigation for agricultural production. More than 90% of the food supply in the country comes from low productivity rain-fed smallholder agriculture. Since the livelihoods of many farmers depend on rainfed agriculture, this paper investigates how smallholders adapt to climate variability. Dhidhessa sub-basin of the Blue Nile river basin is home to many vulnerable immigrant smallholders from other parts of Ethiopia. Our study focuses on this sub-basin to understand how crop production and patterns have depended on rainfall. Secondary data on land cover and croplands, the number of households growing crops, crop yields, crop prices and area covered by three major crops (teff, maize, and sorghum) are analyzed over a period 2000–2019 and interpreted in light of a primary household survey of 135 farmers in the basin. Results show that almost 40% of the basin is under crop cultivation, and the area under cultivation has been growing 8.6‰ per year. Irrespective of rainfall variability, the number of households practicing crop cultivation has also been growing over the years. This means that more farmers are moving into the basin to cultivate. Analysis reveals that adaptation strategies are at play. Farmer decisions to grow which crops are sensitive to rainfall and their expectations of crop prices resulting from rainfall variability. Their decisions and crop prices are endogenous to the smallholder sociohydrology of the basin, leading more farmers to grow Teff relative to other crops in years of lower rainfall. These decisions are due to the lower sensitivity of Teff prices to rainfall variability and farmers' expectations of higher Teff prices relative to other crops as rainfall decreases. Such behavior also induces climate resilience, enabling farmers to respond to climate variability rather than migrating out of the basin. Moreover, it allows more farmers to migrate in and engage in crop cultivation within the basin. Such an adaptive strategy based on past experiences offers a way forward to incorporating adaptation mechanisms in sociohydrological models to simulate and assess water futures for similar basins worldwide.

Place for sociohydrology in sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture: Review and ways forward

“…These feedbacks and the place for sociohydrological understanding of collective, traditional or individualistic behavioural outcomes are particularly strong when considering smallholder farming. For example, cropping decisions in the Dhidhessa basin (Ethiopia) were influenced by lower sensitivity of crop prices to rainfall variability and farmers' expectations regarding the same, inducing more climate resilience into the system, unravelling the endogenous role of crop prices resulting from the culture of crop diversification and leading to climate-resilient agriculture (Teweldebrihan et al, 2021). In Oaxaca (Mexico), agriculturedependent Zapotec communities experiencing extended drought self-organised for collective action to implement small-scale managed aquifer recharge (MAR; Basel et al, 2021).…”

Theorizing the "Social" in Socio-Hydrology: Incorporating Ethnographic Methods to Characterize Coupled Human-Water Systems in Rural Colombia

“…Their qualitative investigation also revealed how the Tunisian revolution of 2011 affected customary rules involving land inheritance, leading to long disputes and abandonment of wells, further accounting for discrepancies in groundwater consumption estimations. In Ethiopia, Teweldebrihan et al (2021) analyzed qualitative household surveys and interviews along with Landsat crop coverage data and time series hydrological data to understand smallholder farmers' choices to plant certain crops and the subsequent water demands. They found that these decisions were "endogenous to the smallholder sociohydrology of the basin" (p. 1), and thus could not be extrapolated to different contexts.…”