Climate-smart agriculture in Ethiopia: Adoption of multiple crop production practices as a sustainable adaptation and mitigation strategies

Given that Ethiopian agriculture is seriously threatened by climate change, understanding the factors that influence the adoption of various climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices supports policy interventions to reduce negative effects of climate change. Therefore, this study was aimed at exploring determinants of the adoption of multiple CSA practices by focusing on crop production. This study used data from 271 randomly selected smallholder farmers from the Gamo, Gofa and Konso zones of southern Ethiopia, and a multivariate probit (MVP) model was used to analyse the data. Crop diversification, irrigation, drought-tolerant and early-maturing crop varieties, integrated soil fertility management, and integrated pest management were prominent CSA practices to improve crop productivity, increase adaptivity capacity, and mitigate the adverse climate change effects in the study area. The study's findings indicate that the adoption of CSA practices varies considerably between farmers and agroecology. The MVP simulation result reveals that farmers’ adoption decisions for CSA practices are highly interdependent, indicating that farmers adopt two or more adaptation and mitigation strategies as mutual CSA practices. Furthermore, the regression result reveals that the education level of farmers, extension contact, accessing climate variability information, access to irrigation facilities, and social group participation were similar underlying factors that affected the adoption decision of CSA practices. By providing climate change information, respective organizations should encourage farmers to utilize available alternate irrigation access and climate-resilient crop varieties. In addition, strengthening social norms through agricultural cooperatives and training on the application of integrated pest management and soil fertility management are suggested to spur farmers' CSA uptake.