Full Length Research Paper Adoption of conservation agricultural practices: The case of Dangila District, Amhara Region, Ethiopia Haimanot Atinkut Bazezew College of Agriculture and Rural Transformation, University of Gondar, Ethiopia E-mail: gondar03@gmail.com or Haimanot.atinkut@uog.edu.et , Cell phone: +0025-19 18 29 5305 Accepted 25 September, 2015 Conservation agriculture (CA) is a set of practices, such as conservation tillage, soil cover and crop rotation, which increases productivity while conserving soil. Despite adoption of CA is a golden opportunity to reduce and recover aggravated soil erosion, nutrient depletion and maximize crop produce, its by farmers in Dangila district hindered because of many pessimistic perception by farmers. This study, therefore, assessed factors that affect adoption decision behavior of farmers’ to CA and its implication on soil health and crop productivity in Dangila district. Multistage sampling procedure was used to identify kebeles and sample respondents. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data while multinomial logit model were used to identify the most important factors that determine adoption decision of CA practices. Results of from multinomial logit indicated that age of household head, educational status, distance from the plot, soil fertility status, total livestock owned and participation in kebele administration had significant influence on farmers’ adoption of CA practices. Generally, the results of this study indicated that adoption of CA is the cumulative of many factors, which should be given due attention in the innovation and transfer of agricultural technologies like conservation agriculture implementation at grass root level. Key words: Conservation agriculture, Adoption, Multi-stage, Multinomial logit model INTRODUCTION Agriculture occupies a key position for the Ethiopian economy, which contributes within a single year 85% of employment of the country’s population, 95% of land under cultivation and contributes more than 96% total agricultural output. However, the traditional land use system hurts this sector and invites excessive soil erosion by wind and water (runoff) and consequently there is a loss of soil productivity (MOA 2011). Substantial farmers through the country face many risks due to soil erosion, water shortage, erratic rainfall, low crop productivity, food insecurity, substantial forest and surrounding environment depletion. The risks come about because of inappropriate farm practices manifested by frequently growing cereal crops without using crop rotation, long-term tillage, and less planting of cover crops. In Ethiopia the average annual rate of soil loss is estimated to be 12 t/ha/year and it can be even higher on highly inclined terrain and on places where the vegetation cover is low (Birhanu 1998). The yield reduction as a result of loss of topsoil each year is increasing to a large extent. Use of conservation agriculture (CA) could be seen as a Author(s) agreed that this article remain permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License ISSN: 2408-5480 Vol. 3 (9), pp. 295-307, October, 2015 Copyright ©2015 Global Journal of Agricultural Economics, Extension and Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. Rural Development http://www.globalscienceresearchjournals.org/