Spatiotemporal drought analysis and crop modeling to decipher risks and adaptation strategies in Ethiopia

Abstract

Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to uncertainty in crop yield because of increased temperatures. Thus, understanding agricultural producers' coping and adaptation strategies to weather shocks is important for better evaluating the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security (Janssens et al., 2020; Delacote et al., 2021; Gouel and Laborde, 2021). This study analyzes spatiotemporal drought in Ethiopia using remote sensing based drought indices and models maize yield to understand the crop performance under climate change. We tested variations in sowing dates and plant density against conventional practices and evaluated the relative gains using an ex ante analysis. In Ethiopia, we identified that scaling out of climate smart agronomic interventions can be beneficial for rainfed maize crop. There is urgent need for context specific climate adaptation and scaling using the enabling environments provided by the national policies.