Farmland Fragmentation and Its Impact onFood Production in Highland Villages of Seru District, Oromia Regional State, South Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Land farmland fragmentation has been a continuous phenomenon and could be a major cause for total natural resources loss within short period unless the government makes change in agricultural policy .The Ethiopian Rural Development Policy which focuses on land tenure and assumes that achieving rapid development in other sectors serves as a remedy to the problem of land fragmentation. However, available empirical evidence shows that the Strategy has brought no measurable and acceptable changes in solving the problem of fragmentation. The existence of ever growing difficulty in managing scattered parcel of plots and its impacts on the households’ food crop production and the quality of the life of the smallholders. This paper thus discussed the findings of the study on the impacts of farmland fragmentation on productivity of crops in four villages of Seru District in Southeast Ethiopia. The study revealed that the social and economic problems induced by farmland fragmentation are diverse and significant in income reduction of the cereal crop producers. The mean adult labors are 4.22 and mean landholding is 2.30 hectares and the ratio of land to adult labor is 0.46 hectare. Nevertheless, trend analysis and forecast based on the number of heirs to the present landholders showed that fragmentation due to inheritance had reduced the current labor to land ratio down to 0.13 for hectare in the next generation, assuming that the level of the efforts needed to detaching the surplus rural labor force from direct farming business are continued at the present level. The output elasticity estimates showed that farm fragmentation had influenced the productivity of crops and croplands negatively. For example, a 10% increase in farm size, cash capital used, expenses for all inputs, labor inputs, average parcel size and in application of manure was found to increase income of the households by 1.05%, 0.69%, 0.35%, 0.32%, 0.12%, and by 0.012% respectively. In addition, a 10% increase in the distance of plots and a 10% increase in the level of fragmentation are found to decrease farm income by 0.05% and 0.14% respectively. Border conflict is also found to be rampant;land lose due to border marking is observable, transportation of inputs and outputs and provision of care and supervision affect yield; and damage by domestic and wild animals and theft by human were found to be the major problems in the management of spatially fragmented plots.