Original Research Article
Assessment, Characterization, Identification and Prioritization of Major Constraints and Potentials of Three Selected Community Watersheds of Agarfa District, Bale Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia
Mulugeta Eshetu, Bayeta Gadissa, Regassa Gosa, Daniel Abegeja, Tesfaye Ketema
East African Scholars Multidiscip Bull; 2024, 7(8): 129-159
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36349/easjmb.2024.v07i08.001
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ABSTRACT
The severity of land degradation due to different socioeconomic and biophysical pressures is a key problem encountered in watersheds. In addition, the lack of research-based references to a given community watershed, particularly with regard to socioeconomic and biophysical aspects, leads to the failure of the interventions. This study aimed to assess and characterize the socioeconomic and biophysical conditions of three selected (Oda Chefo, Wabe Seada, and Oda Nagelle) Community Watersheds of the Agarfa District of Bale Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia. Furthermore, it identifies and prioritizes constraints and opportunities for scientists, planners, intervention, impact analysis, and project performance evaluation. Communities' watersheds were selected and delineated, followed by household interviews, focus group discussions, and biophysical characterization to generate data. The study used a random sampling technique and a total of 121 sample sizes for socioeconomic data, watershed delineation, slope classification, soil type, and LULC classification map developed based on the preliminary outlet identified with the help of GPS reading and ArcGIS 10.5 software. The socioeconomic parameters were analyzed using SPSS version 20 software. The result of the baseline survey identified key constraints such as soil erosion, soil fertility decline, deforestation and climate change, feed and fodder shortage, livestock disease, human disease, unemployment, food insecurity, water shortage, lack of credit access, market, road, cooperatives, high input price, pest and disease, yield decline and lack of irrigation access. The results revealed that the availability of the labor force, local market accessibility, transport services, informal farmer cooperatives, livestock clinics, youth and women associations, and informal intuitions are the main opportunities in selected community watersheds. In conclusion, baseline surveying before any watershed management practice intervention plays ....
Original Research Article
ABSTRACT
Coffee Production plays a significant role in Ethiopian economy, even though the productivity at farm level is among the lowest as compared to other coffee producing country. Soil degradation is one of the most challenging problems in coffee growing areas of Ethiopia. Declining of soil fertility is a fundamental problem to agricultural growth and a major reason for slow growth of food production. Therefore, this activity was designed to determine optimum application time of integrated organic and inorganic fertilizers under coffee growing areas and to assess the effects of temporal application effects of integrated organic and inorganic fertilizers on coffee yield and yield stability performance of coffee cultivar. The experiment was conducted with RCBD design with four replication and ten treatments settled from integrated organic and inorganic inputs at Awada Agricultural research sub-center starting from 2013-2023 for the last 10 consecutive years. The result demonstrated that, application of 200kgha-1N, 77kgha-1P and 12.5tonha-1 integrated nutrient application at each cropping season resulted statically significant higher yield result as compared to the other nutrient applications. The plot treated with the recommended NP + recommended decomposed coffee husk application per year (200kgha-1N, 77kgha-1P and 12.5ton ha-1) indicated over all yield advantage over the other plots by 22.07% or 345kg/ha of clean coffee yield over the recommended (200kgha-1N, 77kgha-1P) applied alone per year and 33.39% or 522kg/ha of clean coffee yield over the plots treated with recommended decomposed coffee husk (12.5ton ha-1) alone application per each cropping season.
Original Research Article
ABSTRACT
The study was conducted in Kambata tambaro Zone, centeral Ethiopia Region; with the general objective of assessing the livestock forage balance using cross-sectional study design from November 2018 to May 2019. For this study Three districts, namely Doyogana, Tambaro and Hadaro tunto were purposively selected from the study area. A total of six kebeles and 361 respondents were selected by random sampling technique from the study districts. Semi-structured questioners, focusedgroup discussion, key informant interview and personal observation were used for data collection. The data were analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS, version 23). Analysis of variance with Tukey test was used for mean comparison of the quantitative variables while chi-square test was employed for significance level of qualitative variables. Accordingly, the overall average landholding per respondent in Kambata tambaro was 1.79ha while the holding in the Hadaro, Tambaro and Doyogana found to be 1.86, 1.67, 1.80ha, respectively. The average livestock holding of a household in the Hadaro, Tambaro and Doyogana was 3.90, 4.06 and 4.56 TLU, respectively, with an overall average of 4.13 TLU. Households in the Doyoganadistricts possessed significantly larger (P<0.05) number of TLU than the households in the other two distircts while no significant difference (P>0.05) was reported amongdistricts in landholding size. The available feed sources ranked by the respondents in decreasing order includs straw, grazing land, hay, green fodder, maize and sorghum stover, bush and forest and concentrate. The overall average utilizable feed DM supply in the study area was estimated to be 4.74 ton with significantly higher (P<0.001) DM supply in the Hadaro (5.75 tons) than in the Tambaro (4.02 tons) and Doyogana (4.34 tons per respondent) areas. However, for year round feeding, the average DM demand of livestock in the Hadaro, Tambaro and Doyogana was 8.89, 9.26 and 10.41 tons per respondent, ..