ADDIS ABABA – The Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACC) program was formally launched by President Sahle-work Zewdie and European ambassadors here yesterday at the UNECA Headquarters.
In a press release the EU delegation sent to The Ethiopian Herald, it is said that the ACC is boosting the historically low yields of Ethiopian smallholder farmers by organizing them into crop-specific clusters. This will help the farmers reap the economies of scale that come from combining numerous tiny smallholdings into larger farmed areas.
The Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) has spent the last two years testing and ramping up the clustering approach on farmland throughout the country. There are now 1.3 million farmers organized in 30,000 clusters across Ethiopia.
“Each cluster is planting improved seeds at the same time, using the same agro-ecologically specific fertilizers, benefiting from the same technical support and harvesting their crops with the same machinery,” said ATA CEO Khalid Bomba. “The farmer clusters are growing Ethiopia’s main food and cash crops, including maize, wheat, teff and sesame.”
The ACC is in large part funded by the EU and its Member States, with major contributions from Denmark with 47 million euros, the Netherlands with 42.5 million euros, and the Union with 10 million euros.
Denmark and the Netherlands are providing core funding to the clustering program. “Agricultural transformation should benefit society as a whole and it’s essential that the ACC keeps its focus on youth and women inclusion in the transformation agenda. Climate-smart solutions in the agricultural transformation are also a key priority for us,” said Danish Ambassador Karin Poulsen in the opening address of the launch.
On his part, the Netherlands Embassy Head of Cooperation, Thijs Woudstra, stated that “We support ATA because we believe in the inclusive growth potential of Ethiopian agriculture. The ACC approach taken by ATA and supported by the Ministry of Agriculture is, in our opinion, one of the best solutions for agricultural transformation.”
The EU’s support to the ACC targets the agricultural clusters in the catchment areas of the four newly built agroindustry parks that the Union is supporting via its POSEAD agroindustry support program.
“The crops grown in these clusters will be a major source of quality raw materials for food production in Ethiopia’s agroindustry parks, which will create thousands of decent new jobs for rural youth, especially women,” said EU Ambassador Johan Borgstam.
The Ethiopian Herald, November 30/2019
BY BILAL DERSO
