Ensete ventricosum is a perennial, security crop that feed s about 13 million people in Ethiopia. It is grown in the homesteads, covering about 18% of the farm, in mi xture with Coffee, kale, and other vegetables. The recent shift from enset to cereals and continual soil fertility decline in the outfields c aused food deficit for at least 3 months in a year. The objective of this work wa s to evaluate the effect of soil fertility gradients on enset growth, identify the major growth limiting nutrie nts, and identify farmers’ decision making criteria in allocating resources to various ent erprises. The research was conducted on farmers fields of resource rich (G1) and poor (G3) for four years (2001-2004). Enset transplants were planted in homestead and outfields. Application of fertilizers by farmers to different un its over seasons and years was recorded. Enset growth and nutrient content was measured. The results showed that the G1 group produced about 2xs more organic waste than G3, and purchased chemic al fertilizers 5xs more than the G3 farmers. About 80 % of the organic resource produced was allocated for ma intaining soil fertility, while 20% bei ng allocated as cooking fuel. Of this 65% is allocated for the enset field in the homestead. There was significantly higher N, P, K and Ca contents in the home stead soils than in the outfie ld, regardless of farmers’ resource endowment. The P content of the outfield was the lowest, less than 25% of the P content of the homestead. Similarly organic matter in the outfield was only about 40% of the homest ead. Enset plants grown in the outfields experienced about 90% height reduction and 50% reduction in pse udo stem diameter, regardless of resource categories, while the NPK content of the plant tissues grown in th e outfield was significantly higher, in some case up to 150% than those planted in homestead. We thus concl uded that growth reduction in the outfield was not directly related to NPK deficiency, but it could have been caused by off-seas on moisture stress in the outfields, manifested by low soil organic matter. The a ttempt to attract resources to the outfield using enset as an attractant crop failed, not because of labour sh ortage but because of unav ailability of enough organic resources in the system. Hence on spot management of nutrients was initiated by farmers
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