Abstract:
Over the years, numerous intervention approaches have been launched to promote
improved technologies in order to attain sustainable development. However, extension
approaches, which have been the dominant rural development strategy, have been slow
in transforming agriculture resulting from low adoption rate of SWC technologies that
were aggressively promoted through extension programmes. Thus, this study
examines the adoption and sustainability of soil conservation practices looking into the
major factors dictating the SWC technology adoption. The study is based on a critical
review of literature including analysis of data collected from 120 farmer households
and 40 extension field staff. In the study, two analytical techniques, descriptive
statistics and logistic regression function, were employed in analyzing data. The
results of the study reveal that rural development strategies have been formulated
without due consideration to farmers’ indigenous knowledge and participation in
development process. Specifically, literature confirms that past extension approaches
have been biased against natural resource management and in this regard, except
physical soil bund structure, other components of soil conservation packages were
found marginalized and the major reason behind the better attention to soil bund is
because of the support that the practice has received from SWC related projects over
the past years. In this regard, a host of factors, most of which are policy related, were
responsible for poor technology adoption and sustainability and the socio-economic
factors also were found to be significant in dictating the adoption process. Overall,
both the historical review and survey results reveal that integrated natural resource
oriented approaches were not adopted and natural resources aspect was neglected.
Therefore, from the findings of this study it is strongly recommended that policy
makers and technical institutions should readdress the policy related issues and
extension system should be revised in such a way that holistic approaches to ensure
environmentally sustainable rural development are employed in small-scale farming
system.
