Baseline Evaluation for Climate Resilient Opportunities for Sustainable Livelihoods Project in Minjar Shenkora District, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia (July 2025 - June 2028)
Households in Minjar Shenkora depend heavily on rain-fed crop farming with very little irrigation (6.8%) and low access to credit (13.9% in the past two years), and 90.4% struggle to access markets, so irrigation, finance and market linkages are the main gaps the project starts from.
Overview
Baseline evaluation for the three-year Climate Resilient Opportunities for Sustainable Livelihoods (CROSL) project (July 2025 - June 2028), funded by BASF | Nunhems and implemented by Solidaridad Ethiopia with local government and cooperatives in Minjar Shenkora District, Amhara Region. The project aims to raise productivity, income and climate resilience for 6,400 farmers (1,600 direct) through smart irrigation, fodder, livestock, poultry and onion value chains, and stronger cooperatives and Farmers Training Centres. The baseline covered seven rural kebeles and set benchmarks for productivity, income, climate resilience, access to inputs, finance and markets, and inclusion of women and youth.
Key findings
- Crop production (96.7%), vegetation (57.8%) and livestock production (55.6%) were the main income sources; 62.9% of households said their income was sufficient and 28.8% said it was inadequate.
- 96% of households owned farmland and 96.3% grew onions, but only 6.8% used irrigation technologies; high input costs (89.9%) and weather conditions (56.8%) were the main production challenges.
- 93.4% of households owned livestock, but average milk yield was 2.9 litres per cow per day, only 25.1% had improved dairy breeds, 20.5% had a nearby dairy processing facility, and 76.2% faced livestock challenges (lack of water 87.6%, animal disease 73.8%, high fodder prices 61%).
- Only 25.76% of farmers had received agricultural support from NGOs or government in the past two years, 26.6% had been trained in climate-smart agriculture, and 35.6% had received training or assistance on livelihood adaptation, although 91.2% reported using some agronomic best practices.
- Access to credit was low: 13.9% had obtained a loan for agriculture in the past two years and 54.6% considered interest rates excessively high, despite 71.2% belonging to savings and credit cooperatives.
- 90.4% of households faced challenges accessing markets, 44.7% were dissatisfied with prices, and 70.5% said there was no local effort to support productivity and market linkage.
- 79.8% were aware of climate change (96.7% noticed rainfall changes, 95.2% temperature changes), and most adapted by changing crops (91.4%) or planting dates (81.6%), but only 26% had received assistance for natural disaster impacts; women and youth cited limited land access (88.9%), lack of startup capital (73.5%) and limited community opportunities (66.4%) as their main barriers.
In figures
79.8 % of households
90.4 % of households
71.2 % of households
26.6 % of households
26 % of households
13.9 % of households
6.8 % of households
Data table
| Item | % of households |
|---|---|
| Aware of climate change | 79.8 |
| Face challenges accessing markets | 90.4 |
| Belong to a savings and credit cooperative | 71.2 |
| Trained in climate-smart agriculture | 26.6 |
| Received assistance for disaster impacts | 26 |
| Obtained an agricultural loan (past 2 years) | 13.9 |
| Use irrigation technologies | 6.8 |
Recommendations
- Use gender-transformative approaches, including female representation targets in cooperatives and engaging men to share unpaid domestic work, and launch 'Smart Agribusiness' incubators giving youth digital tools and land access.
- Promote high-value vegetables (garlic, onion, cabbage), scale solar-powered drip irrigation with a focus on women, and encourage non-farm micro-enterprises linked to agriculture (dairy, poultry, processing, milling, beekeeping).
- Provide comprehensive capacity building and access to inputs, including financial management and credit training for women and youth, working with local vocational and technical training providers.
- Decentralise animal health services and invest in water storage, troughs and solar-pumped systems for year-round fodder and water security.
- Deploy digital weather and climate-smart advisory services, introduce heat-tolerant and rust-resistant wheat varieties with early warning for wheat rust, and scale climate-smart agriculture training.
- Strengthen VSLAs with a focus on women and use public-private partnerships to de-risk lending to agricultural SMEs.
- Reduce broker dependency through cooperative-led marketing, support VSLAs to become formal cooperatives with collection centres and cold storage, and link farmers directly to buyers.
Methodology
Mixed-methods baseline: household survey of 396 smallholder farmer households selected by two-stage sampling (7 of 27 kebeles by stratified random sampling, then simple random sampling with proportional allocation; Yamane formula), plus 7 FGDs, 8 KIIs and a desk review.