The Adoption of Bundled Sustainable Farm and Environmental Practices by Coffee Farmers in Southwest Ethiopia

Despite numerous efforts to introduce sustainable farm and environmental practices (SFEPs), such as pruning, soil erosion control, and water pollution abatement measures), their adoption by smallholder farmers is awfully low in Ethiopia. As a result, smallholder coffee farmers in the country remain in poverty traps even if there is room to enjoy coffee returns by doubling the yield by implementing sustainable practices. On the other hand, most previous coffee sustainability studies focus on the economic, livelihood, and poverty alleviation impact of private sustainability standard schemes. Despite the holistic advantages of the adoption of bundled SFEPs over individual adoption practices, it has been overlooked by earlier scholars in the country. In southwest Ethiopia, few farmers applied sustainable coffee farm practices (particularly pruning, stumping, the use of fertilizer, and mulching), and the yields gained by the farmers are quite low. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the factors affecting the adoption of bundled SFEPs and their intensity at the farm household level in southwest Ethiopia based on cross-sectional data obtained from 153 sampled coffee farm households for the 2019/2020 cropping season. The study results showed that the farmers' adoption of different SFEPs depended on farm and management characteristics (total size of coffee holdings, multiple plots, remoteness of coffee farm, hired labor, and farming experience), socioeconomic variables (literacy, household size, and training), and Fairtrade coffee certification. Likewise, the intensity of SFEPs implementation is influenced by literacy and hired labor. Providing training and supplementing coffee farmers with farm equipment used for SFEPs, promoting small-scale mechanization options to address seasonal labor constraints, as well as strengthening Fairtrade organizations will facilitate the adoption of multiple SFEPs by coffee farmers in the country.