Trees for Food Security Project-Local Knowledge-Local Knowledge of Farmers on Farm Tree Management, East Shewa Zone, Ethiopia

Food insecurity, natural resource degradation and climate change threaten 12-14 million livelihoods in Ethiopia annually. Trees are being hyped as a ‘silver bullet’ solution to meet these triple challenges. However, studies suggest a decreasing trend not only in adoption but farmers practice of maintaining trees on their farms. The study explores the local knowledge of 94 farmers in two villages of the East Shewa Zone, Ethiopia on land use and land cover dynamics on the farming landscape, tree adoption and management of trees on agricultural fields and their implications for sustained food security. Findings suggest farmers have extensive knowledge on tree on fields, their utilities, management, and effect of management on natural regeneration and the overall role of trees in ensuring livelihoods. Farmers identified government policies and population growth as main drivers of land use and tree cover change in both sites. Farmers retained and or planted trees on their fields for meeting tree product needs with tree materials for dead fencing as major a priority.