The adoption of sustainable agricultural practices by smallholder farmers in Ethiopian highlands: An integrative approach

The adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices (SAPs) remains high on the policy and research agenda in most of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper adopts an integrative approach to investigate how psycho-social and socioeconomic factors influence the uptake of SAPs by smallholder farmers in Ethiopian Highlands. The study applies the Theory of Planned Behavior theoretical framework, as well as the Ordered Probit model and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to model farmers' adoption decisions. The results show that socioeconomic factors such as access to agricultural loans and off-farm income, household labor availability and livestock ownership increase the probability of adopting two or more SAPs. The results further show that farmers' intentions and personal norms significantly influence the number of SAPs adopted at farm-level. These results imply that efforts to promote the widespread adoption of SAPs by smallholder farmers should focus on enhancing farmers' access to agricultural loans and off-farm income, through increased integration into the non-farm rural economy and addressing liquidity constraints through affordable rural financing schemes. The adoption of SAPs can further be enhanced by raising farmers' general awareness and knowledge to change their perceptions and attitudes towards sustainable farming practices.