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Background Ecosystem service supplies (ES) have experienced progressive decline mostly due to increased ES social demand. Identifying ecosystem supply (ES), social demand, and their impacts on smallholder farmers' well-being is essential to ensure sustainable utilization of ES. Quantitative studies assessing ES mostly focused on ES supply with little attention given to social need and its effects on human well-being. Methods We assessed and mapped selected ES supply, social demand and their mismatches, and evaluated their impacts on subjective well-beings of smallholder farmers in contrasting agro-ecological zones (AEZ). We used a questionnaire survey to analyze and map six provisioning ecosystem services (ES) focusing on ES supply, social demand and their mismatches. Using the universal soil loss equation (USLE), we mapped the rate of soil loss in the contrasting agro-ecological zones (AEZ). A participatory approach was employed to evaluate smallholder farmers' well-being in the study region. Radar diagram was used to identify the links between ES supply, social demand and smallholder farmers' well-being. Results The results showed that a high supply of provisioning ecosystem goods such as cereal crops, fruits and coffee occurred in humid AEZ, while less supplies were seen in semi-arid AEZ of the study region. The ES supply was not in accordant with ES social demand and different factors such as population size and level of production are among the main factors causing ES supply-demand mismatches. Due to the undulating topography, high rate of soil loss was seen in humid AEZ. Smallholder farmers have given higher values for soil erosion control compared with individuals from semi-arid AEZ. Of all indicators of smallholder farmers well-being, income had the highest weight while receiving the least well-being satisfaction level both in humid and semi-arid AEZs. Conclusion The mismatches between supply and demand in provisioning ecosystem supply had strong and immediate impacts on smallholder farmers well-being. Therefore, we suggest policies that effectively control population growth, applying intensive crop production and strengthening integrated watershed management. These policies would help ES to recuperate and enhance its continuous flow and improve smallholder farmers' well-being both in the humid and semi-arid AEZ of the study region.

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Food insecurity and rural vulnerability is a major problem for landless and low-income farmers. However, identifying the main causes and consequence of food insecurity in rural low-income farmers is not very well understood by policy makers to design and implement more effective policies and programs to seek solution. The study examines the cause and consequences of food insecurity for rural low-income farmers. Analytical tools used include descriptive statistics and causal-chain analysis connecting problems on the local level with regional dimensions. The study revealed that households in the area were vulnerable to food insecurity primarily due to landless and land fragmentation. The result of survey indicates that from the sampled 468 households, 32.1, 14.98 and 52.89% are landless, have land <0.1 ha and 0.1 to 0.5 ha respectively which is a critical factor for food insecurity and rural vulnerability of the area. Besides, population density, low income, lack of education, access to health is also responsible factor for rural vulnerability. Based on the result of this study 47, 26, 14 and 13% of children and lactating mothers, disabled, landless and elders respectively were the most vulnerable group to food insecurity in the area. It is also confirmed that poverty (69.4%: p<0.001) is one of the major social aspect for food insecurity. Household food security should be improved in the region by focusing on education, creation of income generating opportunities, livestock and accesses to different productive assets affecting low income and food insecurity. The findings also imply that even though Ethiopian agricultural strategy has ambitious policy commitment, the agricultural extension problem has not been solved. To address this, Ethiopia has to invest in national level collective agricultural research and development, timely access to high quality agricultural inputs with optimum price, intensive irrigated agriculture, and expanded knowledge dissemination network to smallholder farmers.

The sustainable management of Land - Water - Energy - Food (LWEF) nexus requires an envi-ronmental characterization that allows the comparison of complex interlinkages between nexus resources and livelihoods. This complexity makes this characterization difficult coupled with limited study in quantifying sustainability of LWEF nexus and its linkage with livelihood. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the link between sustainable LWEF nexus and livelihoods. We used analytical hierarchy process and pairwise comparison matrix in combina-tion with weighting model. The result of composite LWEF nexus index was 0.083 representing, low sustainability. This could be linked with nexus resources consumption, use, and manage-ment. From the analysis of the weight of land, water, energy and food nexus resources, the highest weight was observed for food. The focus of on food production only shows no clear synergy on provisioning, supporting or regulating nexus resources to address livelihoods. The result further showed that LWEF nexus resources have strong correlation with livelihoods. This was evidenced by social (r&gt;0.8, P&lt;0.01), natural (r&gt;0.3, P&lt;0.05) and physical (r&gt;0.6, P&lt;0.01) liveli-hood indicators showed strong positive correlation with LWEF nexus resources. From this re-sults, it was observed that managing nexus resources not only provide a significant contribution to achieve sustainable LWEF nexus, but also be effective for enhancing livelihood through food security. This could be attained by strong evidence based policy to ensure sustainable use of nexus resources. The results provided by this study would serve as the foundation for future study, policy formulation and implementation.