Livelihood strategies of rural landless households in Ethiopia, evidence from Borena district in Amhara region

Due to High population growth, the numbers of landless households were increasing in Ethiopia in general and Specifically in Borena district. This created challenging situation for households to practice agriculture. To compensate this risk, they were looking livelihood diversification for their survival. However, there is empirical gap on determinants which influence the participation of landless households in diverse livelihood strategies. To fill this gap, it is important to conduct study on determinants of landless households’ livelihood strategies in the study area. To conduct this study, both primary and secondary data were used. Primary data was collected through structured interview with respondents, interview with key informants including model and elder farmers and from focus group discussion in which the participants were development agents, kebele (Ethiopian’s lowest government administration level) chairman and leaders of one-to-five farmers’ network group. Secondary data was collected from articles and recognized district documents. The study indicates that about 11.54%, 7.03% and 5.13% of the sample respondents engaged in on-farm only, non-farm only and off-farm only strategies respectively and the remaining 76.3% practiced livelihood diversification. Remittance, trading of small ruminants and cattle, petty trade, carpenter, sale of tella, areki (Ethiopian local alcohol), tea and bread, blacksmith and pottery, weaving and grain milling were non-farm livelihood strategies practiced by the landless households. In addition to these, sales of wood, charcoal, stone and sand were off-farm livelihood strategies. Multinomial logit model result shows that sex, family size, educational status and access to credit positively and significantly influenced landless households’ participation in different livelihood strategies. Despite this, age, market distance and frequency of extension contact had negative and significant impact on landless households’ participation in different livelihood strategies. The study concludes that non-farm and off-farm livelihood strategies were important to reduce the problem associated with landlessness and the study recommends that development agent should support the landless households to participate in different livelihood strategies.