Assessment of Farmers Perception to Soil Fertility Management in Kalisha District, Hadiya Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Soil is one of the natural resource and under high pressure that is increasing from year to year, resulting in poor fertility. The objective of this study was to assess the attitudes of farmer’s perception to soil fertility management practices. In order to achieve these objectives, random sampling methods was used to select respondents in the study area. The data was collected by using field observation, questionnaires and key informant discussion. The collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. The survey revealed that the factors that hinder farmers from using improved ways of soil fertility management practices are: labor problem 27.5%, economic problem 20%, lack of awareness and demographic factors 37.5%. In the Kalisha District, there are a number of major indigenous soil fertility management practices (SFMP) that are using by almost all farmers such as using cattle dung, straw, intercropping legumes crops in their farm land and use of enset in homegarden area. In other form, this study showed that, in Kalisha District the attitudes of farmers to soil fertility management is less, due to the awareness gap in society and less interventions of development agents. Therefore the farmers should be aware of soil fertility management practices on both biological and physical measures to restore soil fertility and they have to scale up the indigenous SFMP to maintain the productivity of the soil.