Farm forestry decision-making strategies of the Guraghe households, southern-central highlands of Ethiopia

This study was initiated with the contention that sustainable livelihood strategies and lasting environmental rehabilitation can be secured only through judicious resource conservation works and its efficient utilizations. Eucalypt wood covers nearly all the construction needs of the households and constitutes a substantial part of fuelwood consumptions. Coffee and t'chat make up an important part of daily diets and are used in various ceremonies. Whereas eucalypts are planted by all households, coffee and t'chat crops are grown only in the midland and lowland villages. Marketing of eucalypts is confined to Pas in the neighborhood of road networks and areas where local demand arises. Although higher altitude t'chat fetches higher prices, most t'chat growing farmers generate some cash from its sale. High coffee yields of acceptable quality often fetch modest cash income to the grower households. Growing of eucalypts for cash income is mainly constrained by lack of access road, low farm gate prices, high competition with food crops for soil nutrients and moisture, and shortage of land and labor. The logistic regression analysis confirms that agro-ecological zone, sex of household head, number of eucalypt tree owned, and age of household head represent important explanatory variables that explain farmers readiness to expand eucalypt woodlots. The model so constructed correctly predicted 84.1of the households that established additional eucalypt woodlots mainly for cash generation. The total number of eucalypt trees owned by households is significantly related to attitude of the household head towards eucalypts, wealth status, and landholding size of the household. In male-headed households men make the bulk of the decisions to establish, manage, and commercialize tree and/or shrub plantations. Women are given only rare chances to make marketing decisions with the male partners. On the other hand, women possess full control over household food sources, preparations, needs, and improvements. Households generate cash income from different farm and off-farm sources, inter alia, agricultural crops, livestock, trees/shrubs, and wage work are major ones. Agricultural crops represent main source of cash income for greater number of highland households. Whereas sales of livestock are more important in the highlands, cash incomes from sales of trees/shrubs as well as incomes from off-farm activities represent the dominant financial resort in the middle altitudes. Lowland households rely on sales of annual crops and coffee during good seasons. Furthermore, some households resort to credit facilities that are characterized by high interest rates. Remittance money represents an important means of augmenting cash incomes for households in nine of the ten PAs. Financial viability of eucalypt woodlots was assessed through both methods of conventional economic calculations and Chayanovian calculations. Both methods confirmed the highly lucrative markets of eucalypt poles as compared to agricultural crop production. This is mainly because of lack of access to more profitable production techniques and low productivity of agricultural crops per unit area. Otherwise, farm gate prices of eucalypt poles are far from being attractive and outperforming that of agricultural crops. Important recommendations were drawn for swift and efficient rehabilitation of deteriorating biophysical conditions and reversal of worsening farmers' living standards. Many of the recommendations pertain to policy interventions that are aimed at genuinely assisting farm households overcoming the farm predicaments. Promotion of appropriate agro-forestry practices was viewed as a starting point in ameliorating farmers living conditions and improving farm productivity. The number of current on-farm multipurpose trees/shrub species is too few to make land resource management and food production significantly sustainable. Many of the problems currently facing the farmers are out of their control and much difficult to be left society to them.