Awareness and Views of Farming Households Regarding Land Resource Degradation and Conservation- the Case of Bule Hora, Ethiopia (2013 ).

Abstract

Identification of land degradation and its conservation techniques is of interest to and knowledge of land users. Hence, decisions to conserve land resources are largely determined by farmers' knowledge of the problems and perceived benefits of conservation intervention. However, these issues have received little attention in conservation planning. Hence, past efforts did not bring significant change. Pursuing participatory approach has been strongly recommended. The objective of this study is to assess awareness and views of farmers' regarding land resource degradation and conservation. Formal household survey questionnaires, key informants’ interview, field observation, official records and informal interview were used to generate data. The results show that all interviewed farmers have reported the existence of soil erosion and deforestation problems and the majority prioritized conservation of these resources first among others. Unlike the causes of deforestation, majority of the farmers didn’t aware most of the causes of soil erosion. Farmers also have noticed different consequences of soil erosion with Declining of soil fertility (64%) and farm land productivity (59%) were ranked from firs to second by the majority. 92% of the farmers believed that soil erosion could be reduced and they used a range of practices but not widespread due to some technological, institutional and household attributes. More than 66% of the respondents also aware increasing of fire wood price, frequency of drought, temperature and wind velocity, as well as land productivity decline and Loss of water sources as the consequence of deforestation. Also, respondents have favorable attitude towards land degradation and conservation in that the majority were agreed and disagreed to positive and negative likert type scale statements respectively. We believe our findings could have a profound implication on policy issues related to genuine participatory land conservation and to rehabilitate the degraded land.

Keywords: farmers’ awareness, farmers’ view, land resource degradation and conservation.