EVALUATING THE CONTRIBUTION OF INTEGRATED WATERSHED MANAGEMENT ON CROP AND ANIMAL PRODUCTION: CASE OF KORIR WATERSHED, KILTEAWLAELO WOREDA, NORTHERN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The Ethiopian Government is implementing natural resources development based agriculture. One of the natural resources development activities is watershed development in drought-prone areas of the country to address food insecurity and improve livelihood. Because of little research information and studies, this study assesses the contribution of implemented watershed technologies and practices along with their roles on crop production and animal production. The necessary information was collected using semi-structured questionnaire, focus group discussion and field observation, which was processed by SPSS software and analyzed by descriptive statics tools. In addtion to this remote sensing and GIS tool is used to analyze the land use cover change of the study watershed. The watershed practices in the study area include physical soil and water conservation measures, biological soil and water conservation, moisture harvesting structures and area enclosure activities. The findings reveals that the watershed management practices have improved water availability (springs, handug wells, and dam) and expanded irrigated farmlands. Framers have also got animal feed availability from the treated gully and area enclosure to increase animal production. As a result of the watershed development interventions, Crop production and animal production has increased significantly.) The main opportunities that resulted from the watershed management are the availability of interested beneficiaries in the watershed development and labour availability to work in the watershed while the challenges include the lack of full base line data on the watershed, maintenance budget, poor functionality of watershed development committee and needs more budgets for industrial inputs (Gabions). Therefore, increasing the knowledge, skill and attitude of house hold beneficiaries on the watershed management techniques, strengthening the watershed development committee by the government and NGO intervention, In addition to this, to solve the budget deficit for industrial input the integration of resources from government and NGOs should be encouraged for watershed development to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of watershed development project.