Agricultural and Biological Research

Determinants of farmers’ crop choice decision in irrigation agriculture in South Tigray

Workie Sahlu Anbaw* and Moges Girmay Phogella

Crop choice decision under irrigation agriculture is widely subjected to a serious of household, institutional, social and economic factors. This study assessed determinant factor that influence farmers to choose crops with access to irrigation in Alamata district, southern Tigray zone of Tigray region, Ethiopia. Both primary and secondary data were collected for this study. Primary data were collected from 130 sample households from both vegetable grower and non-growers. Descriptive statistics and econometric model were employed for data analysis. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 2 Kebeles out of 8 irrigation user Kebeles in the District. The logit model reveals that gender of the household, access to market, education level, age of the household, access to credit services and total number of livestock, distance to water sources, irrigated land size and distance to farmer training center were positively and significantly related with the growing vegetable crops by farmers. Therefore, governmental and non-governmental organization should give due emphasize to the aforementioned variables in order to increase benefit of irrigation by producing more commercial crops.