Drivers, farmers’ responses and landscape consequences of smallholder farming systems changes in southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is now the second most populated country in Africa with more than 100 million people and an annual population growth rate of 3%. Here, we assess how the on-going expansion of arable land and urban areas is affecting the availability of common resources, such as forest and grazing land, and the availability of biomass for food, feed, and energy. Taking the Hawassa area in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia as a study case, this study aims at analysing the drivers of change of farming systems, assessing farmers' responses to these drivers and appreciating the consequences for the agricultural landscapes' composition. We found that (i) national-level policies, climate and soil fertility changes, population increase, and urban expansion were major drivers of farming systems change in the Hawassa area, (ii) forests and grasslands have been progressively replaced by cropland and urban areas, and (iii) these changes resulted in fragmentation and diversification of local agricultural landscapes with potential consequences for ecosystem service provision. Farmers responded with the following three main livelihood strategies: consolidation, diversification and specialization. These changes led to more diverse and fragmented agricultural landscapes. This research contributes to the ongoing debate about the viability of small farms.

More people, more trees: A reversal of deforestation trends in Southern Ethiopia

“…Our results echo those of other studies in overlapping and nearby areas in terms of LULC change and its impact on ecosystem services: an increase of cropland and food production occur at the expense of forest, tree rich areas and grassland and their related services (Ariti et al, 2015; Kebede et al, 2019; Kindu, Schneider, Teketay, & Knoke, 2016). Our study only focused on provisioning services identified by farmers as the most important elements for their wellbeing, which were impacted by LULC change.…”

A Systematic Review of Drivers and Constraints on Agricultural Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Cropland expansion in SSA was more rapid in the 1980s than the 1990s, and predominantly in favour of maize, rice, soybeans and oil palm [57]. In some cases, smallholder farmers grow crops for domestic consumption and/or sale while, in other cases, crops are grown in commercial quantities to be sold [58][59][60]. Drivers of agricultural expansion are explored based on a review of 15 papers and categorised into proximate and underlying drivers (Table 2).…”

“…From our systematic review, we identified four key proximate drivers of agricultural expansion that were addressed in five of the reviewed studies (Table 3). Declining soil fertility is identified explicitly as a proximate driver in just one of the papers; climate change, as manifested in increasing temperatures, increasing rainfall variability, greater extremes of weather, and change in seasonality, is reported as a key biophysical driver of agricultural expansion in three of the included studies [58,60,63]; and access to services and demand for food and fuel are each found as drivers in one study. These drivers can interact in complex ways, as is particularly highlighted in the paper focused on Ethiopia [58].…”

Agro‐ecology, resource endowment and indigenous knowledge interactions modulate soil fertility in mixed farming systems in Central and Western Ethiopia

“…Two to three focus group discussions with a total of 16–18 household heads with an equal share of females and males as well as young and old farmers were held in each agro‐ecological zone. The main farm typology indicators were farm size (landholdings (LH)), livestock ownership and level of agricultural inputs (i.e., chemical fertilizer) (Haileslassie et al., 2006; Kebede et al., 2019). Thresholds set by farmers in all villages were <2 ha farm size, <6 tropical livestock units (TLU), and relatively low chemical fertilizer rates to categorize farmers as ‘Eyeessaa (poor)’, while a LH of ≥4 ha, ≥8 TLU and use of full fertilizer rates (100 kg urea and 100 kg DAP) were defined as ‘Ditta (wealthy)’.…”