Abstract

The production of food in sub-Saharan Africa, which is severely hampered by the consequences of tropical climate change, depends heavily on smallholder farming practises. The system is in charge of feeding the entire population in Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular by producing around 90% of agricultural produce and farming 95% of the total area. This study examined how climate change has affected Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers’ productivity. The traits of smallholder farmers are described in terms of the size of the land, labour management, and scale of output, technology use, and climate risk adaption. The incremental temperature change over the years in Ethiopia, from 0.622 to 1.29 in 2000–2010 and from 1.37 to 1.507°C in 2020–2021, clearly shows the need to concentrate on climate change adaptation and mitigation policies that are especially smallholder-focused. Review papers also discussed the significant milk productivity disparity and the large agricultural production discrepancy in the nation. Smallholder farmers embrace technology at a very low rate; for instance, fertiliser with better seed utilisation is 4.58% and fertiliser with local seed is 4.76%. Technology adoption (resistant varieties and agronomic packages), crop diversification and cropping system, water harvesting and small-scale irrigation, integrated soil fertility management, crop-livestock mixed farming approach, and conservation agriculture are all examples of adaptation strategies that have been mentioned repeatedly in various papers. Building the capacity of smallholder farmers through the creation of climate-smart models is advised. Other recommendations include public investment in agricultural research and development to increase productivity, modelling of indigenous climate-smart conservation practises like those used by the Derashe people, and integrating crop-livestock-soil fertility management.