3.2.3. Land and Soil Management Practices

Table 5 shows the different land and soil management practices including the proportion of households who actually practiced each of the measures during the decade. Between 2006 and 2017, 71.9% of the households sought advice from the extension service worker while 61% went on to use seasonal forecasts and drought early warning information provided through various channels and platforms within each village. About 49% of the households changed time of harvesting as a land or soil management strategy while close to 42% used various soil and water conservation techniques as well as clearing more agricultural land to grow more crops. The least adopted land and/or soil management practices were seeking agricultural land in other geographical areas (25.8%), changing fertilizer, pesticide or herbicide use (19.4%), and use of irrigation (8.1%).

**Table 5.** Land and soil management adaptation measures by households in Bobirwa sub-district.


Significance levels: \* *p* < 0.05, \*\* *p* < 0.01, \*\*\* *p* < 0.001. Source: Household Survey Data, 2017.

Figure 4 shows that there was a very high level of adoption land and/or soil management practices with 86.4% of the households adopting one or more of the eight measures identified in the study area. Almost 17% of the households adopted three different measures in Table 5 while 16.2% adopted two different measures. Approximately 44% of the households adopted between four and eight different land and/or soil management measures inclusive of the 1.6% who adopted all the land and/or soil management measures identified in the study area. Less than 9% of the households implemented only one land and/or soil management practice in Table 5 while 14.6% of the households did not adopt any land and/or soil management practice.

**Figure 4.** Extent of adoption of land and/or soil management measures (n = 310).
