BACKGROUND: The recent research recommendations on the adaptations of poor are toward local specific investigations, aimed at a comprehensive understanding of the adaptation strategies through in-depth analysis of the status, and the explicit on how climate and non-climate global change processes constrain the inherent strategies. Intent to this idea, we have designed this study to assess the small-scale farmers' adaptation and coping strategies in southwestern Ethiopia. METHODS: The agroecology approach steered in case-study design was used for the conceptual and analytical framework. The data collected from 335 households were analyzed for descriptive and multivariate analysis of variance and substantiated by qualitative data obtained through focused group discussion, interview, and observations. RESULTS: The significant differences were observed in the watershed among households in the case studies on their adoption of the identified adaptation and coping strategies. The sustainability of preferred strategies was different along case studies, solely determined by the impact magnitude of the adaptations constraining factors. Although free ecosystem-based strategies become less practical and replacing by new strategies in the watershed, the processes were gradual, internal to the community and managed through adaptive learning in the highland. However, the paths were perceived as toward maladaptive, resulted by the state interventions which disrupted free adaptations, deteriorated adaptive learning of the community, and shaped the adaptation responses toward the interventions in the kolla agroecology. CONCLUSIONS: The study implies that the situations of households' adaptation strategies are beyond the reflections of their respective production ecology, designated within climate variability in the previous studies. The structural land use dynamics and associated resource tenure insecurity have greater constraining effects on the strategies than the impacts of climate variability in the kolla. Thus, subsequent research interested in such contexts, and any plan for the development interventions should (re)consider the impacts of non-climate national/and global environmental change in shaping the adaptation and coping strategies of the local community.