Climate-Smart Agriculture, Welfare, and Income Risk Management in Ethiopia

Abstract

Despite significant gains in poverty reduction in Sub-Saharan Africa, rural poverty remains a concern in the region (Barrett et al., 2017; Hansen et al., 2019; Clay and Zimmerer, 2020). The agriculture sector in the region continues to underperform because farmers rely on unsustainable farming practices that lead to land degradation and poor soil fertility (Marenya and Barrett, 2009; Tittonell and Giller, 2013; Grabowski et al., 2016; Mekuria, 2018; Yigezu, 2021). Moreover, climate change appears to be a major source of risk for agricultural production. One option for sustainable agricultural production is “climate-smart” agricultural practices that support production and enhance adaptive capacity (Bradshaw, Dolan, and Smit, 2004; Di Falco, Veronesi, and Yesuf, 2011; Lipper et al., 2014; Asfaw et al., 2016). Thus, it is important to establish this link of substitutability or complementarity of different livelihoods options of farmers such as adopting CSA and other income risk management strategies such as migration and off-farm employment, scaling up CSA practices or promoting off-farm employment to improve farmer’s resilience against the effect of climate change. This brief provides insight into the link between CSA and household welfare and income risk management in SSA using data from a low-income country context using Ethiopia as a case.