Farming system dynamics and sustainability pathways in three districts of Jimma zone, Southwestern Ethiopia

Smallholder farmers in southwestern Ethiopia face overlapping challenges that trap them in cycles of poverty and land degradation, yet the feedback mechanisms sustaining these traps remain poorly understood. This study addresses the research question what distinct feedback mechanisms perpetuate low productivity across four coexisting farming systems and system-specific leverage points. We used system dynamics modeling, collecting data from 375 households across three purposively selected districts (Dedo, Gera, and Sekoru), complemented by 21 key informant interviews and 8 focus group discussions. Causal loop diagrams (CLDs) were constructed to map feedback cycles within each system. Our results identified four major farming systems with observable disparities across each system. Farm income ranges from 15,691 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) (subsistence, 33% of households) to 46,114 ETB (coffee-honey, 33%). Meanwhile, frequent extension contact varies from 5.7% (subsistence) to 36.1% (wheat-livestock, 19%). Maize-livestock farmers (15%) overgraze at 2.3 TLU/ha (vs. recommended 0.8), mining soil fertility. Coffee-honey farmers face deforestation declined (canopy cover 60% → 25%) and 81% climate impact perception; wheat-livestock farmers have only 8.3% formal credit access. CLDs identified distinct reinforcing traps: the food-labor nexus in subsistence, the soil mining trap in maize-livestock, the input-labor-pest complex in wheat-livestock, and the deforestation-pollination-price triad in coffee-honey. The findings indicate that each farming system is locked into a distinct self-reinforcing cycle, and that system-specific, testable intervention ranging from nutrition-sensitive safety nets for subsistence to climate-smart agroforestry for coffee-honey are required to break these cycles. These findings provide a dynamic, multi-system framework to guide policy design and future empirical evidence for sustainable smallholder agriculture in Ethiopia and similar contexts.