Abstract:
The broad concept of land management practices refers to activities on the ground that uses
appropriate technologies with to respective to land use system for the improvement of the
productive capacity of the land. The aim of this study was to examine land management
practices,their contribution to livelihood and land resources conservation and also to identify
determinant factors for agricultural land management adoption in Wegera Wereda, Central
Gondar Ethiopia. Both purposive and stratified sampling techniques were used to collect
the primary data. Secondary data were also collected from relavant sources. Wegera Wereda
was stratified in to three strata, based on agro-ecology i.e. highland, mid-altitude and lowland.
Then one woreda from each agro-ecology was purposively selected based on land management
practices and intervention of land management practices. Sample size was determined by rule of
thumb and 214 households were selected. Simple random sampling technique was used to select
households involved in the study. Household survey, group discussions and key informant
interviews were used to generate the data. Descriptive statics, ANOVA, Likert scale, chi-square
and binary logit model were used to analyse the data. The study results show that inter cropping,
crop rotation,mulching, animal manure, traditional rotational grazing and traditional terrace
were the common indigenous land management practices in the study area. Where as
improved terrace, compost, inorganic fertilizer, improved crop seed, agroforestry and cutting
and carrying system were improved land management practices. The result also shown that
there was income and crop productivity difference between land management adopters and
non adopters and this might be due to the adoption of land management practices. Assesement on
environmental sustainability indicators also shows that there wa improvement of environmental
sustainability due to adoption of land management practices. Binary logistic regression outputs
revealed that educational level, income, farming experience of household head,access to
extension service and livestock number were major significant determinant variables for land
management practices adoption. Lack of practical training, low extension service, population
growth and low awareness of the farmers were some of challenges identified. The precence of
different institutions working on agriculture were found as the most important opportunities to
adopt effective land management practices in the study area. To build appropriate land
management practices strengthening institution work on land related issue and expanding
agroecologically suitableble land management needs attention.
