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Capturing the heterogeneity of farming systems through farm typology is essential for targeting agricultural interventions in any mixed crop-livestock farming system. Therefore, this study aims to construct a farm typology for the Doyogena and Basona districts of Southern and Northern Ethiopia, respectively. A combination of principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering (HC) was used to develop a generalized and domain-specific farm typology in the study areas using farm household survey data collected from 503 respondents. A generalized farm typology was constructed considering all the dataset variables whereas the domain-specific farm typology was developed once all the data variables had been categorized into three groups: variables that describe i) the resource endowment, ii) technologies used, and iii) food and nutrition characteristics of the farm. The farm types identified from the domain-specific farm typologies were merged to develop comprehensive, representative, and meaningful farm types. In both districts, the results of the generalized farm typology are more generic, and are not able to fully capture the diversity of farmers’ resource endowment and food and nutrition security status. Compared to the generalized farm typology, the domain-specific farm typology is more useful for targeting tailored agricultural development interventions. The merged typology results show that a combination of medium resource endowment with medium income, medium technology, and low food and nutrition security farm type (34%) is the dominant farm type in the study areas followed by a farm type combining low resource endowment with low income, high technology and marginal food and nutrition secure (21%). The findings of this study provide several insights into targeting and scaling domain-specific agricultural development interventions that can be applicable for sustainable intensification of mixed farming systems. For example, growing multiple crops in crop rotations and as intercrops; implementing conservation tillage, and introducing improved seed varieties, and livestock breeds offer possible pathways for sustainable agricultural intensification for medium resource endowment, medium technology, and low food and nutrition security farm types.

AbstractThe aim of this study was to assess the impacts of climate smart agricultural practices on household income and food security in Doyogena and Basona climate smart landscapes in Ethiopia. Data were collected from 796 randomly selected smallholder farmers from the two climate-smart villages of the Doyogena (399) and Basona (397) districts. Using a propensity score matching approach, this study examines the contribution of CSA practices to farm household income and food security. Our study finds that the adoption of CSA practices enhances household food security in Doyogena, whereas in Basona, the implementation of CSA practices improved the average annual income of households. This study suggests that the introduction of CSA practices and scaling up of these practices should be site-specific, but not a one-size-fits-all approach. Promoting and scaling up these practices may require assessing the needs and priorities of communities in different locations.

Unsustainable land use management and the resulting soil erosion are among the most pervasive problems in rural Ethiopia, where most of the country’s people live, jeopardizing food security. Despite various efforts to introduce soil conservation measures and assess their costs and benefits, it is unclear how efficient these measures are from an economic point of view in securing food production. This paper examines the costs and benefits of three soil conservation measures applied in the country in three different rural districts facing different degrees of soil erosion problems using survey data collected from 750 farm households. A production function is estimated to quantify the costs and benefits of more sustainable land use management practices. We show that the soil conservation measures significantly increase productivity and hence food security. Comparing the costs and benefits, the results indicate that implementing soil conservation measures would benefit farm communities in the case study areas through increased grain productivity and food security.