The farmers in the experiment had a higher WTP for environmental
adaptability than for yield stability. This is consistent with
farmers' ranking of seed selection criteria in Appendix A.1 where only
about 11% and 24% of the farm households indicated productivity and
marketability as their major seed selection criteria for sorghum and
teff, respectively. This compared to more than 60% of the farm
households that indicated factors related to environmental adaptability
and yield stability as their major preferred criteria to select
their seed varieties for both crops. One reason for this could be the
frequent droughts and other environmental stress factors such as soil
degradation being experienced by most farmers over the last several
decades. Comparing productivity with the adaptability and stability
attributes, we see that there is strong preference for adaptability and
stability. For example, for teff, increasing yield stability is equivalent to
increasing productivity by 1300 kg per hectare. For sorghum, the
preferences are even stronger mainly because this is a crop common
in environmental stress areas. The high WTP for environmental
adaptability and yield stability, compared to productivity, points to
farmers' strong preference for resilient crop varieties. In countries like
Ethiopia, where crop production is mainly rain-fed and often subject
to various natural calamities, production risk is an important
consideration when making production decisions. The ever increasing
deterioration of the natural environment to support crop production
and lack of resources and technology for farmers to address
production shocks have increased the importance of environmentally
adaptable and yield stabile traits. If one is to consider the lack of
harmony of technology traits with farmers' concerns this is the major
reason for precarious adoption of improved varieties (mainly highyielding
varieties) which are generally believed to be less resilient to environmental hardships (Wale and Yallew, 2007). This result has
important implications not only for in-situ conservation of crop
genetic resources but also for crop varietal technology adoption. It
demonstrates how important the environmental adaptability and
yield stability attributes are in motivating farmers to participate in any
in-situ conservation effort. It also points that these traits have to get
enough attention in future breeding activities. Comparing sorghum
and teff, the results show that farmers attach stronger WTP for
productivity, environmental adaptability and yield stability traits of
teff than the respective traits in sorghum