Farmers Choices of Precursor Crop for Wheat Production in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia

Abstract

Adoption of crop rotation is seen as best agronomic practice for increasing wheat yield in Ethiopia. Most farmers lack improved farming experiences and skills. They focus on production of food crops (mainly cereals) year after year for family needs. Hence practice of crop rotation is one of the options for improving wheat yield. However, there is lack of empirical study on the factors influencing farmers’ choices of precursor crop for rotation for wheat cultivation. To fill this gap, this study identified factors influencing farmers’ choices of precursor crop to wheat planting. Cross-sectional survey data collected from randomly selected 381 farm households and multinomial logit model were used to achieve the objective. The study identified that farming experience and skill of household head, livestock holding sizes, and access to pesticides had positive and significant effects on farmers’ choices of pulse and vegetable crops being precursors to wheat planting. The study also obtained that the mean predicted probabilities were 0.58 and 0.34 for the choices being cereal and pulse crops as precursor crops to wheat planting, respectively. It is suggested that agricultural extension personnel need to focus on the factors that influenced farmers’ choices of precursor crops to break cereal monoculture system and improve wheat yield.

Keywords: Wheat in Ethiopia, Precursor crop, Crop rotation, Multinomial logit model