American Journal of Life Sciences 2017; 5(2): 38-45 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/ajls doi: 10.11648/j.ajls.20170502.11 ISSN: 2328-5702 (Print); ISSN: 2328-5737 (Online) Farmers’ Investment on Sustainable Agricultural Practices: Evidence from Amhara Region, Ethiopia Haimanot B. Atinkut 1, * , Abdulhamid K. Bedri 2 , Assefa K. Sentayehu 4 , Dick Warren 3 1 Department of Rural Development and Agricultural Extension, College of Agriculture and Rural Transformation, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia 2 Department of Environment and Development, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 3 Department of Soil Chemistry, School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, Wooster, Canada 4 Department of Plant Science, College of Agriculture and Rural Transformation, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia Email address: hey.china@yahoo.com (H. B. Atinkut) * Corresponding author To cite this article: Haimanot B. Atinkut, Abdulhamid K. Bedri, Assefa K. Sentayehu, Dick Warren. Farmers’ Investment on Sustainable Agricultural Practices: Evidence from Amhara Region, Ethiopia. American Journal of Life Sciences. Vol. 5, No. 2, 2017, pp. 38-45. doi: 10.11648/j.ajls.20170502.11 Received: January 24, 2017; Accepted: February 14, 2017; Published: March 9, 2017 Abstract: Sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) is a pooled of practices that increase productivity while conserving soil, which put on firm foundation of zero tillage, use of manure, legume intercropping and legume crop rotation. Despite use of SAPs is a panacea for aggravated soil erosion and nutrient depletion and maximizing crop produce, but it seems a plateau for farmers in Dangila district. This study, therefore, assessed factors that affecting of farmers decision behavior of implementing SAPs in Amhara region. The multistage sampling procedure was used to identify kebeles and sample respondents. Mixed nature of data were collected from sample respondents. Both descriptive statistics and Binary logit model was employed. The result of this study indicates that executing of SAPs is the aggregate of many factors, which should be given due attention in the transformation agriculture to environmentally friendly technologies and climate smart agricultural practice. Keywords: Binary Logit, Degradation, Investment, Multistage Sampling, SAPs 1. Introduction Ethiopian Economy is based on agriculture, which accounts 42 percent of GDP, 80 percent’s of total employment, and 70 percent foreign currency [1]. Moreover, agriculture is the single most important source of food for the nation [2]. In countries where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, soil fertility depletion in smallholder farming is one of the fundamental consequences of environmental problems causing low agricultural productivity. The dependency of livelihoods of majority of the people on agriculture results in fast and vast land degradation. Coupled with fast growing population, erratic rainfall and poverty; land degradation poses a serious threat for declining of agricultural productivity of the nation. The agriculture sector suffers from poor cultivation practices and frequent drought, but recent joint efforts by the government of Ethiopia and donors have strengthened with terrible starvation [3]. Land is the most important natural resource in this planet. It is a place from which humans beings are exploiting a number of resources [4]. Almost all necessary inputs and source of food found from land. However, land is losing its productivity due to a rising trend of land degradation [5, 6]. The well-known proximate causes of land degradation are deforestation, overgrazing, limited soil and water conservation, burning of dung and crop residues, limited use of organic matter and declining use of fallow [7]. Land degradation is an old problem for Ethiopia but new in attracting attention of policy after 1973/74 the devastating famine in Wollo. Although following this worse effect of land degradation, to overcome the problem, Ethiopia has been launch afforestation and conservation programs since 1980s with the support of government and non-governmental organization; however, success of it is limited [8, 9].