Construction of conversion factor models for local area and local production measurement units to standard units for Oromia Region, Ethiopia

Data on area and production of crops, using both local and standard measurement units, were collected through the Ethiopian Agricultural Sample Enumeration (EASE 2001/02) household survey. The objectives of this study are to test whether local (traditional) area and production measurement units vary between weredas within a zone, and to construct conversion factor models for changing local units into metric units for each zone in Oromia Region. A statistical investigation using General Linear Model (GLM) where local measurement units are allocated as covariates and weredas as random factor has been carried-out. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences (p0.05) between mean values of selected local measurement of area and production between weredas. However, using cluster analysis, homogeneous groups of weredas within each zone are identified and for each of the homogeneous group of weredas, conversion factor models are constructed using linear regression models. It should be noted that although over 160 local area and over 200 local production measurement units are used by the agricultural holders in Oromia Region, only the most frequently used local units, i.e. timad, keata, senga, boy and olma for area and kuna, kuntal (quintal), kubaya, dawla and madaberia for production are selected for this analysis.