FACTORS AFFECTING THE ADOPTION OF SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION PRACTICE AT HOUSEHOLD LEVEL IN BORICHA WOREDA, SIDAMA REGION ETHIOPIA

ABSTRACT The Study identified the Determinants of Adoption of Soil and Water Conservation Practice at Household Level in Ba, Sidama Region Ethiopia’’. A combination of multi stage purposive and simple random sampling techniques were employed to get a total of 264 sample respondents’. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. The primary data were collected by interviewing 264 smallholder household heads, focus group discussions which had a total of 15 FGD 5 focus groups in each Kebeles having 6 members from each group. 32 key informants, which included 6 DAs, 24 elders and 2 officials from district. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics like percentage, mean, standard deviation, maximum, minimum, percentage, Chi-square to identify variables that vary significantly among the households and Econometrics such multiple linear regressions analysis by using SPSS version 23. The descriptive statistics result revealed that 85.5% were male and 14.5% of the respondents were female. 81.3% of respondents in the study area were married. 66.3% of the respondents attended secondary school education and the remained 21.6% of the respondents attended the primary school level education. The average family size and average age of the respondents was 4.5 and 39.4 with the standard deviation of 1.9 and 13.3 respectively. The results of currently practicing SWC practices were physical and biological type and accordingly 90% of the respondents practiced both biological and physical SWC practices and from these, 65% of respondents were practicing soil bund, stone bund , Fanya-juu, hillside terrace, bench terrace, trench, pit, half moon and indigenous (such as contour ploughing, etc.). 56.2% of them are currently using planting grasses, planting leguminous tree and crops, agro forestry and crop rotation. The results also showed that 92.8% of the interviewed respondents had positive perceptions about SWC practices in Boricha Woreda so that 91% of them were practicing SWC measures. Multiple linear regression results revealed that the household who were married, well educated, in adult age, had access for credit, male headed had good perceptions about SWC and increase in household family size were adopted SWC practices by 71.2 %, 46.2 %, 40.3%, 32.7%, 19.7%, 38.7% and 24.7% respectively. The study recommends that different GOs and NGOs should provide training, access for adult or formal education, etc. in order to enhance the practices of CBWSM tasks under different communities in Boricha district.