Smallholders’ coping mechanisms with wheat rust epidemics: Lessons from Ethiopia

Abstract

Crops are variously susceptible to biotic stresses-something expected to increase under climate change. In the case of staple crops, this potentially undermines household and national food security. We examine recent wheat rust epidemics and smallholders' coping mechanisms in Ethiopia as a case study. Wheat is a major food crop in Ethiopia widely grown by smallholders. In 2010/11 a yellow rust epidemic affected over one-third of the national wheat area. Two waves of nationally representative household level panel data collected for the preceding wheat season (2009/10) and three years after (2013/14) the occurrence of the epidemic allow us to analyze the different coping mechanisms farmers used in response. Apart from using fungicides as ex-post coping mechanism, increasing wheat area under yellow rust resistant varieties, increasing diversity of wheat varieties grown, or a combination of these strategies were the main ex-ante coping mechanisms farmers had taken in reducing the potential effects of rust re-occurrence. Large-scale dis-adoption of highly susceptible varieties and replacement with new, rust resistant varieties was observed subsequent to the 2010/11 epidemic. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to identify the key factors associated with smallholder ex-ante coping strategies. Household characteristics, level of specialization in wheat and access to improved wheat seed were the major factors that explained observed choices. There was 29-41% yield advantage in increasing wheat area to the new, resistant varieties even under normal seasons with minimum rust occurrence in the field. Continuous varietal development in responding to emerging new rust races and supporting the deployment of newly released resistant varieties could help smallholders in dealing with rust challenges and maintaining improved yields in the rustprone environments of Ethiopia. Given the global importance of both wheat and yellow rust and climate change dynamics study findings have relevance to other regions.

Ethiopia’s transforming wheat landscape: tracking variety use through DNA fingerprinting

“…The variety ‘ Kubsa’ , released in 1995, was until recently considered to be the most widely grown wheat variety in Ethiopia due to wide adaptability, food quality, and marketability; factors which led to strong farmer preference 40 . High susceptibility to new variants of stripe rust in 2010 is considered to have resulted in some dis-adoption of ‘ Kubsa’ by farmers 15 , 33 , 34 . DNA fingerprinting revealed that ‘ Kubsa’ was still widely grown across Ethiopia, being the second most frequently identified variety (13% of all samples).…”

“…This dynamism in varietal adoption is considered to be driven by rapidly changing wheat rust pathogen populations, in combination with enabling policies and seed systems. Damaging rust epidemics, e.g., stripe rust in 2010 and stem rust in 2013, have caused farmers to seek alternative resistant varieties 20 , 34 . In combination, pro-active policies in the seed sector such as fast-track variety release, pre-release seed multiplication of rust resistant candidate varieties e.g., Danda’a and Kakaba and rust awareness campaigns by the EIAR and Ministry of Agriculture have also contributed 17 , 44 .…”

“…Several wheat adoption studies have been undertaken in Ethiopia over the last decade 11 , 32 – 34 , but all have so far relied solely on farmers’ recall and/or expert opinion to estimate cultivar-specific use. The first large-scale application of DNA fingerprinting to assess wheat diffusion in Ethiopia collected data in 2016/17 (Fig.…”

A New Method for Determining Critical Irrigation Period for Large Regions Based on Precipitation-Meteorological Yield Integral Regression Relationship—A Case Study of Winter Wheat in Shaanxi Province, China

“…Therefore, it is necessary to select a suitable method that accurately separates the trend yield and meteorological yield from the actual yield. Logistic equations are widely used because they describe bounded growth and capture the long-term trend of time series growth more accurately than other methods [20][21][22]. Therefore, in this study, the logistic equation was selected to fit the trend yield, which is expressed as follows:…”

Misidentification by farmers of the crop varieties they grow: Lessons from DNA fingerprinting of wheat in Ethiopia

“…Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia rely on wheat for subsistence and livelihood security. Farmers can replace stress susceptible varieties with more tolerant or resistant ones, like in the case of wheat rust epidemics [ 16 ]. Knowing the prevalence of susceptible wheat varieties also is key to assist policy makers target limited stocks of fungicide during wheat rust alerts in countries such as Ethiopia [ 17 ] and thereby the effectiveness of policy intervention [ 15 ].…”