Abstract:
Agriculture is the major economic backbone of most countries in the world, particularly in
Africa Ethiopia is a country whose economic policy is led by agriculture. Yet it is famine prone
due to its poor farming approaches and back ward cultivation practices. More than half of the
rural population in Ethiopia could not produce enough food to support themselves. The attempt
of this study was to assess farmers' perception towards organic and inorganic farming in Chebera
Shasho kebele, Konta special woreda to fill knowledge and information gaps seen among local
farmers. Samples of I 03 farmers were selected from 830 farmers by systematic random sampling
method. Quantitative and cross sectional approach of research design was applied. Observation,
focus group discussion and structured questionnaires, were tools for data collection. The
collected data were analyzed for Pearson correlation, one way anova and chi-square test using
Statistical Package for Social Science Program (SPSS) version 16.0. The study revealed that
farming is dominated by male farmers operating at small-scale level. Despite low level of
knowledge and poor attitude towards inorganic fertilizer technology, the overall adoption and
use of fertilizers by the farmers was high. But fertilizer usage was seriously constrained bythe
lack of capital, high cost of fertilizers and inadequate information. Therefore, transforming
factors such as adult and women participation in agricultural production, extension contact,
training and practical demonstration of technologies, as well as access to micro-credit facilities
are critically required to serve as opportunity to change farmers' attitude towards fertilizer use in
Konta Special Woreda.
