Abstract Farmers' soybean Glycine max L. (Merrill) yields and performance were highly variable under their usual practices (without full recommended packages), indicating that current soybean production constraints likely prevent consistent results in western Oromia, Ethiopia. Climate change poses significant challenges to agricultural productivity; adopting climate‐smart varieties is essential to enhance resilience and yield. On‐farm demonstrations of recently released, climate‐smart soybean varieties are crucial for enhancing farm productivity and resilience, particularly in the face of climate change. Therefore, these demonstration trials aim to showcase and promote recently released climate‐smart soybean varieties under full‐package practices compared to traditional farmers’ practices. They also provide a learning platform for farmers to apply these technologies on their farms in selected Agricultural Commercialization Cluster districts of western Oromia. Two soybean varieties from the medium (Billo and Dhidhessa) and late (Gute and Korme) maturity sets were compared under full‐package practices versus traditional farmer practices in western Oromia. The results of the on‐farm demonstration trials showed that implementing full‐package practices significantly improves the performance of climate‐smart varieties, resulting in higher yields and increased farmer income compared to traditional methods. The highest grain yields (2686.7 and 3231.8 kg ha −1 ) were obtained from the Gute and Billo soybean varieties under full‐package practices. Additionally, farmers and other stakeholders learned the importance of implementing full package practices to enhance crop yield, pest tolerance, high pod loading, early maturity, and economic viability compared to farmers’ practices. Therefore, it can be concluded that promoting high‐yielding, climate‐resilient soybean varieties, along with sustainable intensification practices, is recommended to increase soybean production and productivity, enhance food security, and support sustainable farming in western Oromia.
Dabesa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.