FARMERS' PERCEPTION TOW ARDS ORGANIC AND INORGANIC FARMING: CASE OF CHEBERA SHASHO KEBELE, KONTA SPECIAL WOREDA, SOUTH WEST ETHIOPIA.

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.