Smallholder Farmers’ Perception and Their Adaptation Strategies to Climate Variability and Change in Ale and Bure Districts of Ilubabor Zone, Southwest Ethiopia

This study examined smallholder farmers’ perception of climate change and their adaptation strategies in Ale and Bure districts of Ilubabor zone, southwest Ethiopia.  A cross-sectional survey research design was employed to collect information from 498 randomly selected households in six rural kebeles. A two-stage random sampling technique was used to select the sampled households. Climate data on rainfall and temperature from the meteorological station to each study district covering the period from 1983 to 2017 was also used for this study. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Kendall trend test were used to analyze the data. Results revealed that smallholder farmers perceived long-term changes in climatic parameters such as temperature, rainfall amount, frequency of drought and number of rainy days over the past three and half decades. The Mann Kendall test and Sens’s slope estimator test also indicated that mean annual rainfall has a significant negative trend while mean annual temperature revealed a statistically significant increasing trend. Changing planting dates, crop diversification, planting shade trees, agroforestry systems, soil and water conservation practices were identified as major important adaptation strategies implemented by farmers. Therefore, it is concluded that there had been a significant change in rainfall and temperature in the study area and farmers engaged in various climate response strategies.  This study suggests that there is a need to develop more effective climate change adaptation strategies that will enhance the resilience of farmers to a changing climate.