Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia

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dc.contributor.authorMellisse, Beyne Teklu
dc.contributor.authorvan de Ven, Gerrie W. J.
dc.contributor.authorGiller, Ken E.
dc.contributor.authorDescheemaeker, Katrien
dc.date.accessioned2023-01-31T03:25:00Z
dc.date.available2023-01-31T03:25:00Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.description© The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Agroforestry Systems (2018), available online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10457-017-0106-5 . Keywords: Home garden type; Cropping patterns; Cash crops; Commercialization; Diversification; Catha edulis; Africa; Ethiopia.
dc.description.abstractHome gardens in southern Ethiopia are regarded as efficient farming systems, allowing interactions and synergies between crop, tree and livestock components. However, these age-old traditional home gardens are evolving rapidly in response to changes in both the socio-economic and biophysical environment. Altered cropping patterns, farm size and component interactions may affect the systems’ sustainability. Home gardens exhibit a huge diversity in farms and farming systems, which needs to be understood in order to design interventions for improvement. Dynamics of home gardens were studied over two-decades (1991–2013) based on a survey of 240 farm households and focus group discussions. Farms were grouped into five types: Khat-based, Enset-cereal-vegetable, Enset-based, Enset-coffee and Enset-livestock. Farm trajectories revealed a shift from food-oriented Enset-based and Enset-livestock systems to (1) cash crop oriented khat-based systems, and (2) combined food and cash crop oriented Enset-cereal-vegetable systems. In densely populated, market proximate areas a major trend was expansion of khat, from 6 to 35% of the area share per farm, while the combined area share of enset and coffee decreased from 45 to 25%. Concurrently, the cattle herd size fell from 5.8 TLU to 3.9 TLU per household. In medium populated, less accessible areas the trend was consolidation of combined production of food and cash crops. Enset and coffee together maintained a share of over 45%. Easy transport and marketing of the perishable cash-generating khat compared with traditional crops favoured its cultivation among smallholders located close to markets. The insights in home garden change in response to increasing population pressure, decreasing farm size and market development may help to design interventions to increase system sustainability.
dc.description.sponsorshipThis research was funded by the government of the Netherland through the project capacity building for scaling up of evidence-based best practices in agricultural production in Ethiopia (CASCAPE). We thank the farmers who participated in this research. Our thanks are extended to experts from Bureau of Agriculture in Wondo Genet, Melga, Dale and Bule districts for making available secondary data and for their cooperation during the survey data collection process. We also wish to thank Mr. Azmach Tensaye for his help in translating questionnaire into local language and supervising enumerators during data collection process.
dc.identifier.citationMellisse, B.T., van de Ven, G.W.J., Giller, K.E., & Descheemaeker, K. (2018) Home garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia. Agroforestry Systems, 92, 1579–1595. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-017-0106-5
dc.identifier.otherhttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-017-0106-5
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14096/217
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.titleHome garden system dynamics in Southern Ethiopia
dc.typeArticle

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