Agriculture is a viable sector to maintain and boost growth rates, create more jobs, ensure food security, reduce poverty and generate hard currency through promoting export. It is also a powerful driver to industrialization by supplying input for most manufacturing industries such as food processing, textiles, and leather.
On account of its critical role for economic transformation and development potential, the government has been taking a number of initiatives to increase the quality of sector’s production and improve its export potential.
Among the many, the Agricultural Commercialization Cluster (ACC) initiative is the one.
This new initiative (ACC) is a geographical direction focused approach which enables farmers strengthen firm relationships and produce high quality agricultural commodities that the market demands. In other word, it is market-driven platform that brings farmers together to produce the same agricultural products on selected ecology or farming fields and to solve common problems.
The initiative focuses on growing cereals, oilseeds, pulses, including teff, durum wheat, malt barely, sesame, maize and horticulture commodities.
Recently, a forum that discusses the implementation of ACC practices and other related issues was organized jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Transformation Agency, Synergos Institute, Water and Land Resource Center of Addis Ababa University and other partners.
Speaking on the occasion, Oumer Hussein, Minister of Agriculture said that over the last decades Ethiopia has been devising and implementing a number of development plans and strategies with the goals to stimulate local economy, accelerate growth, reduce the level of poverty, enhance sustainability and inclusiveness and cut off its reliance on overseas development aids.
Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy, Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP), Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), Growth and Transformation are among the plans the country devised to create an enabling environment and stimulate its economy, Oumer said.
In the same way, with the aim to expedite the transformation of the agriculture sector, the ACC initiative was designed. Currently, the approach is under implementation in the Oromia, Amhara, Tigray and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ states, the Minister added.
As to him, the approach requires better design, coordination and interventions of various implementers in the agriculture sector as well as public, private and development sector actors in order to enhance its impact on the ground and ensure gains sustainably.
The Minister notified that the ACC Initiative has been designed and planned in a manner it closely aligned with country’s Integrated Agro-Industrial Park (IAIP) development principles and strategy to stimulate and achieve growth by strengthening linkage among farmers to produce commerciable products, utilizing up-to-date technologies.
Presenting the findings of his study, Gete Zeleke (Ph.D), Director of Water and Land Resource Center, Addis Ababa University said that ACC has greater role to improve Ethiopia’s agricultural sector by increasing the volume and quality of agricultural products and benefitting farmers. It can even transform nation’s economy if it is outlined clearly and implemented accordingly.
While talking the principal gaps identified in the study, Gete underscored that challenges related to provision of inputs, such as seeds and fertilizes, limitation to minimize post-harvest loss by employing better technology and improved storage facilities, poor utilization of mechanized technology, weak infrastructure and high transportation costs. If the constraints addressed accordingly and the approach is implemented effectively, it is promising to bring about change in the sector and transform a vision to a new reality, he said.
Techane Adugna, Director of ACC in Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), on his part said that in a situation where farmers are engaged in subsistence farming practices, it is not possible to increase product and productivity for commercial purposes.
In order to increase product and productivity and produce sizable surplus crops which can be traded for cash, we should enable the farmers join ACC. If farmers produce targeting the market, they can significantly decrease cereals importation and to increase nation’s exportable products.
“Before introducing cluster approach, we have observed and taken lessons from over 10 countries which have been implementing it. Our nation set off to ACC that is carried out with farmers, producers, input suppliers, product sellers, finance suppliers, NGOs and government bodies together”, the director stated.
Cluster will not be realized on all crop types in unison, rather it needs focusing on selective crops. Due to this, the Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) initiative is carried out focusing on 10 selective commodities based on the given criteria, Techane added.
As to him, in ACC, 30 to 60 farmers called as ‘Farmers Production Cluster’ should join using full package to grow the crops at the same time using the same inputs and link to the market. “In market linkage, we have created four stages: basic stage, intermediate stage, advanced stage and company stage. We suggest the farmers to pass each stage and at the end of the day make them beneficiaries,” Techane remarked.
The Ethiopian Herald September 11, 2019
BY BAHIRU SETEGNE
