ADDIS ABABA- Ministry of Agriculture expressed readiness to engage development partners and investors in various agricultural investment areas thereby scaling up the success stories registered so far.
Sharing the best experience of the country in Green Legacy Initiative (GLI), national wheat and ‘Ye Lemattirufat ‘(Bounty of the Basket) initiatives and agri-food system approach, Agriculture Minister Girma Amente(PhD), stressed that the country is on the right track.
He disclosed that the nation is ready to attract investment in the aforesaid areas particularly in input production, mechanization and agro-processing. Thus, he called on development partners to support end to end implementation of food system approach and scale up the successful journey.
GLI, which has so far planted 40 billion seedlings and created one million green jobs, has increased forest coverage from 17.2% in 2019 to 23. 6% in 2023 with the plan of making the coverage 30% by 2030, Girma stated, adding that the initiative has similarly decreased deforestation from 91,000 hectare per year in the early 27,000 per hectare.
The impact of GLI goes beyond forest coverage as it has reduced soil erosion and soil sediment into river 10 times. “We have managed to rehabilitate 33.6million hectares of land,” he said.
Following the initiative, coffee production has now reached one million tons per year which doubled the production in the last five years.
The initiative is also increasing coffee plants with over 8.5billion seedlings have been planted in the past six years.Earning over 1.3billion USD in last season, Girma believed that the nation is taking position of the third largest coffee producer in the world.
He also expressed that the national wheat initiative which is designed to increase production, and substitute import, the nation is putting effort to create farmers access to technology into a commercial cluster.
So far, the nation has clustered 11.8million hectares and 9.2million farmers are now in the commercialization which account for half of the total land. The Minister highlighted that the commodities include wheat, maize and horticulture crops as well.
He emphasized that the commercialization approach has allowed the application of improved seed and fertilizer by 37percent and 60percent respectively in the past five years. Besides lifting taxes on all mechanization and irrigation equipment so as to make it affordable to farmers, it has established mechanization service centers close to farmers.
So far, he indicated that over five million hectare land is mechanized. “Ethiopia has become the leading wheat producer in Africa because of this initiative. We covered 6.6million hectare last year but now it will be 8.3million planning to produce 30million tons of wheat this season,” he said.
More importantly, Girma underlined that following the commercialization initiative, the country has fully replaced malt barley and wheat, and in the process of replacing rice import in the coming two years.
During the first phase of the implementation of ‘Bounty of the Basket initiative’, Ethiopia was producing only 26million day-old chicks but currently, a plan is set to make it 150million this year, according to the Minister.
Recently, the nation inaugurated a grandparent stock farm with a capacity of producing 110million day-old chicks. Due to the steps taken, Ethiopia’s undernourishment rate has become better than the East African average while the rate of stunting has also decreased from 42.1 to 34percent, he underlined.
BY BETELHEM BEDLU
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD TUESDAY 12 NOVEMBER 2024
