EFFECTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY ON CROP PRODUCTION AND ADAPTATION STRATEGIES; THE CASE OF ADOLA REDE DISTRICT, GUJI ZONE, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE, ETHIOPIA

ABSTRACT Earth’s climate is changing and shows variability, this affects smallholder farmers of developing country including Ethiopia because their economy depends on rain fed agriculture. The objective of this study is to investigate effects of climate variability on crop production and explore adaptation strategies in Adola Rede woreda. Thus, to achieve the objectives set, data was collected from both primary and secondary sources. The study was employed mixed method in which quantitative methods has been combined with appropriate qualitative methods. Time series study design was therefore used to assess the effects of climate variability on crop production and cross sectional design were to identify smallholder farmers’ perception and explore adaptation strategies to climate variability. So that 251 sample smallholder farmers’ was selected from four kebeles using systematic random sampling for a survey questionnaire. Data from different sources were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitatively, multivariate regression and multinomial logit models (MNL). The regression result shows that climate variables significantly affects the crop yield. Multinomial logit model was used to analyze factors that determine preference of adaptation strategies to climate variability and the result showed that farmers perception of climate variability, sex, age, family size, level of education, total family size, farm experience of house hold, farm land size, distance from home to farm, access to off farm income, access to loan/credit, access to information forecast, and land owner ship are significant factors that determine farmers’ preferences/choices of adaptation strategies to climate variability. Hence, these findings suggested a need to encourage smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity.