Abstract:
Land tenure insecurity, poor extension services, physical land characteristics, demographic
and institutional factors contributed to poor land management. This study was conducted to
assess determinants of sustainable land management: focusing on land certification and land
size in Duna District; Hadiya Zone, SNNPR, Ethiopia. Systematic random sampling technique
was used and selects 144 households for questionnaire.About 18 key informants and 8 focus
group discussion members were selected purposively. The chi-square (χ2) analysis was used
to test the relationship between land certification and landholding sizewith land management
practices.The binary logistic regression analysis was employedtoidentify factors influencing
land management practices.The result showed that farmers’ confidence on tenure security
was increased after certification and the majorities (92%) of the farmers feel more secured on
land rights. Land certification increases land management practices (91%), reduce boarder
conflicts (82%), promote gender equality (87%) and used as collateral to get farm inputs
(95%).As shown fromχ2 analysis, a significant and positive relation was found between land
certification and land management practices. Similar resultfromχ2 indicatesthat land
management practices weresignificantlyinfluenced by land size and decrease as land size
becoming small (p<0.05) except crop rotation and organic manure application.As shown
from binary logit regression analysis, land certification, land size and education
level(p<0.05), farmers’ contact with extension agents,farmland slope, farmers’ perception of
land degradation and farming experiences were significantly and positively determine land
management practices(p<0.1)while farmland distance negatively(p<0.05).Therefore,the
government should expand land certification in study area to increaseland tenuresecurity,
develop cadastral mapping system to update landregistration records, provide training for
extension planners and create awareness to farmers to increase sustainable land use.
