Farmers’ Tree Needs and Traditional Practices on Seasonal Frost Management in Degraded Frost Affected Highlands of Northeastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia has strong initiations to rehabilitate or restore degraded lands but the success has been hindered by low soil fertility and extreme environmental events such as seasonal frost. Reports show that frost is one of the major causes of seedling mortality in the highlands. The main objective of the study was to investigate farmers’ tree need and traditional seasonal frost management practices in degraded frost affected highlands of central Ethiopia. The study was conducted in purposively selected frost-prone areas in four woredas (districts), namely, Dessie Zuria, Legambo, Menz Gera and Menz Mama in Amhara regional state. A total of 202 households were sampled following simple random sampling technique by using the list of taxpayer households available in each site. Primary data were collected through a survey of individual households using a structured questionnaire, and focus group discussions (FGDs). The major tree species grown by farmers were E. globulus (55.0%), Cytisus proliferus (20.0%) and Cupressus lusitanica (9.4%). The major attributes and products of trees that were preferred by farmers were multipurpose use and fast growth nature (43.5%) and pole and construction material (68.5%) respectively. Seasonal frost is the major causes of seedling mortality for most of the farmers (59.4%) followed by drought (10.7%) and free grazing (8.5%). The farmers commonly practiced mulching (33.5%) followed by hoeing and watering (24.1%) and plant cover (21.5%) for frost management. The management practice of farmers should be optimized, and new alternative management practices should be examined, introduced and scale out in different frost-prone areas.

Keywords: Seasonal Frost, Species preference, Planting niche, Seedling mortality, Traditional practices