Identifying the current farming system is important for different agricultural policy implementation as climate variability changed the farming system in the study area. Hence, this study aimed to analyze the current farming system of crop-livestock and agro-pastoral areas in the south omo zone. A multistage sampling method was used to select 240 sample respondents from the study districts. Descriptive statistics and narrative approaches were used to analyze data. The result indicated that there was a dominance of crop production (63.3%) and supportive livestock production (36.7%) in crop-livestock farming system whereas in agro pastoral farming livestock dominates (72.5%) with supportive crop production (27.5%). The result also indicated that the main livestock production constraints for farmers and agro-pastorals in the area are extensive drought and erratic rainfall, diseases, shortage of veterinary medicine, feed and water shortage. Moreover, the survey result shows that poor soil fertility management, low inputs use, pests (diseases and insects), delay of input supply and high costs are the main impediments in crop production for farmers and agro-pastorals in the area. The major constraints of natural resources in the study are soil fertility decline, land shortage due to fragmentation of land for their children and deforestation. Therefore, it needs more attention to reverse the mentioned major constraints so as to enhance production and productivity. Timely supply of improved inputs, improved forage, methods of disease control and intensifying natural resource management and creating better awareness on physical and biological soil management are critical for improvements of soil to enhance productivity.
agro-pastoral, crop, farmers, farming system, livestock
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