Socio-economic Characterization, Identification and Prioritization of Major Constraints and Opportunities in Burka Jiren Community Watershed of Gechi District, South-western Ethiopia

Watershed management is perceived as a promising strategy to improve production and productivity. Even though numerous programs have targeted watershed management, farmers have been passive participants due to their weak identification of their watershed-related constraints and socio-economic characteristics. Therefore, the activity was intended to characterize, identify, and prioritize the existing constraints and opportunities of the Burka Jiren Community Watershed. A cross-sectional research design with multi-stage sampling was used to select 108 respondents to collect quantitative data, whereas qualitative data were collected from focus group discussions and key informants. Secondary data were collected from available published and unpublished documents. Pairwise matrix ranking and simple descriptive statistics were used. SPSS version 20 was used for data entry and analysis. The descriptive results showed that about 93.5% of the respondents were men, about 54.6% were at primary (1-6) education level, the mean age was 40.6 years, and the mean family and land size were 5.5 members and 1.6 ha, respectively. Pairwise ranking results showed soil erosion, soil fertility, and crop productivity declines were the first, second, and third major prioritized constraints in the watershed, respectively. Based on this finding, different development practitioners should emphasize the socio-economic characteristics and major constraints of smallholder households in the Watershed study.