Adoption of soil conservation practices in North Achefer District, Northwest Ethiopia

Land degradation in the form of soil erosion presents a threat to food security and sustainability of agricultural production in Ethiopia. In response, governments and development agencies have invested substantial resources to conserve soil. However, the efforts put toward to conserve soil have failed to meet the anticipated objectives. Hence, the study was carried out to investigate the factors that are affecting the adoption of soil conservation measures in North Achefer District. The data were collected from 121 households by the use of household survey, focus group discussion, and key informant's interview. Descriptive, inferential, and binary logistic regression models were employed to analyze the factors determining adoption of soil conservation measures in the study area. The most important factors affecting the adoption of soil conservation were age, farmers' level of perception on soil erosion, family size and labor availability, livestock holding, farm size, farmers' contact with development agents, and farmers' access to training and credit services. For instance, the family size increases by one person, held other factors constant, the likely probability to adopt soil conservation measures increases by a factor of 2.04, livestock-holding increases adoption by a factor of 2.53, and so on. Therefore, in order to improve adoption of soil conservation measures by farmers' district officials, extension experts and development agents should give due attention to those significant variables that determine farmers' decision to adopt soil conservation measures.