Appraisal of Issues Influencing Soil-Steps Application for Sustainable Farmland Management in High-Potential District, Ethiopia

Abstract

Soil damage by moving water is a somber predicament on farmlands in highland Ethiopia. Sizeable number of trial in farmland preservation has been executed to handle the crisis during the last tens of years. However, the attempts have not been vibrant to trim-down the danger to an attractive extent. This paper evaluates factors contributing to application of soil-steps (bunds) as sustainable farmland management technology (SFLMT) by smallholder farmers in one of the high-potential districts of northwest Ethiopia named Dangila Woreda (District). Mixed method triangulation designs involving concurrent acquisition and interpretation of quantitative and qualitative data were used in the study. Data were acquired from randomly chosen 201 farming households during the harvest seasons of 2011 and 2012. Ordered questionnaire, participatory field observation, key informant interview and focus group discussion were mechanisms employed during the data acquisition. Descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations and percentiles), Chi-square test, t-test and the binary logistic regression model were used to analyze the quantitative data. The qualitative information was textually narrated to augment the quantitative results. Findings of the investigation confirm that age of the household head, the number of household members, slope of the farmland, the size of the farmland held, households’ participation in indigenous labour-sharing activities and the number of farm tools owned were significantly increasing the building of soil-steps as SFLMT in the study district. Involvement in off-farm activities and pest invasions were considerably hindering farmers from building soil-steps on their farmlands. The results in general indicated that households’ access to livelihood assets are key promoters for farmers’ implementation of soil-steps on their farmlands. Local resource preservation and improvement trials should thus ponder on convalescing farmers’ material endowments to improve their capability to use soil-steps as SFLMT in their farming activities.