A TIME SERIES ANALYSIS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND ITS IMPACTS ON FOOD PRODUCTION IN NORTH SHEWA ZONE IN ETHIOPIA

North Shewa is among the areas in Ethiopia hardest hit by climate change (CC), mainly through frequent occurrence of CC induced hazards like flooding, insect outbreaks, hailstorm, alien weeds, disease and pests, droughts and all others which are a result of CC. Time series data collected from the Central Statistical Authority of Ethiopia and the National Meteorological Agency of Ethiopia were employed to examine the variability in the trends of precipitation and temperature over the period of three decades. An attempt was made to measure the number of people and area of land vulnerable to CC induced shocks over a time scale. Also, estimation of the impacts of CC on food production was done using an econometric model; where climate variables together with other factors were set to be determinant of food production over time. The co-integrated Vector Auto Regressive and Error Correction Models were employed to empirically analyse the impact of CC factors on food production. The estimated results show that food production was significantly affected by improved technology, area under irrigation, manure usage, Meher rain and temperature, while fertiliser application and Belg rain were found to be less significant in the model. The Johannes’ approach revealed that 90% of the variation in productivity was explained by area under irrigation, area covered by manure per hectare, the change in usage of improved variety, and the three climate parameters (Meher Rain, Belg rain and Average temperature).