There is substantial evidence showing that agricultural growth plays a crucial role in economic growth, particularly in less developed countries. Ethiopia has been committed to hasten the growth of its agriculture to bring structural transformation and reduce poverty by employing various policy and strategy interventions. The general consensus has been that while the agriculture has been growing and expanding rapidly as a result of the interventions, the sector has not been transformed yet.
The Ethiopian Herald has approached experts of the field to analyze the reason behind this outcome. Alemayehu Berhanu, Head of Communication at Ministry of Agriculture says that the agriculture sector has shown significant growth in that last few decades. He puts forward numbers to support his claim.
At the time when the EPRDF-led government came to power, the annual total production used to be no more than 50 quintal. Last year the production was 306 million quintal, while it is projected that this year’s production to be 347 million quintal.
However, as this growth is joined with population growth, and given that the agriculture sector is still the mainstay of the economy, there is so much work left ahead to enable the country achieve structural transformation, and food security, Alemayehu reasons. Issues relating to productivity, soil fertility, input supply, alongside technological and attitudinal problems need to be attended.
“We have also gaps in relation to our implementation capacity.” So, in order to solve these bottlenecks and transform the sector, modernizing the agriculture is important, he notes. “Modernizing means mechanization,” Alemayehu opines, “however, mechanization is not only about tractors, combiners, but also about utilizing the appropriate technologies that can help smallholder farmers be effective.” And according to him, very few smallholder farmers are implementing technology.
They are no more than 27 percent, he says. The number of farmers that are appropriately utilizing the extension system is less than half. “Today we use more than 14 million animals for farming, and we cannot modernize the agriculture sector like this.” Alemayehu points out that the appropriate strategies on seed, the extension system, mechanization and various animal resources have been sculpted to bring about agricultural transformation. “When implemented, I am sure we will be able to modernize the agriculture even earlier than scheduled.
” Chimdo Anchala (PhD) is Senior Director of Production and Productivity at Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA); an agency setup to promote agricultural transformation by providing support to relevant stakeholders. According to him, transforming the agriculture requires a lot of coordination and systemic thinking.
“While input is essential to increase production and productivity, we do not have an input system, regulation, standard, or seed law and directives.” The percent of farmers that use improved seed is 15 percent, which is low. On the other hand, seed (input) supply is also low as there is only one parastatal seed company, and private sector’s engagement is minimal. But, there are things being done by ATA in this regard to remedy the issue, the Director notes.
By setting up a project called Direct Seed Marketing (DSM), which facilitates a streamlined seed distribution system, efforts are already underway to improve Ethiopia’s seed distribution system. In addition, there are agricultural one-stop shops and farmers service centers that are established at woreda and kebele level in various regions of the country to deliver high quality agricultural inputs to smallholder farmers in differing variety and volume. Also, in order to modernize the agriculture and change it from subsistence farming to commercial farming, Agricultural Commercialization Clusters (ACCs) are also established.
The aim of this initiative is to create the opportunity for farmers to learn from each other and have a fair input/extension service distribution among farmers. So, by integrating all these initiatives, there is currently huge effort being exerted to make access to seed and other inputs easy for farmers. Moreover, Chimdo sees the newly finished extension strategy as crucial tool that will help facilitate agriculture transformation.
“Ethiopia has an extension system, but not an extension strategy that has its own objective, goal, mission and activity.” As to him, the strategy takes into account the bottlenecks the Agency studied and identified, and will be more marketoriented. “If Ethiopia is able to successfully implement this strategy, it is a huge means to bring agricultural transformation.” Messele Fisseha, Soil Expert, for his part believes that Ethiopia should look at ways to upgrade its irrigation usage in order to transform its agriculture.
Most of the country’s farmers are dependent on rain; so, the country should really look into irrigation and investing huge amount of capital in water and agricultural development, Messele argues. In Ethiopia’s case, the water that comes naturally (from the rain) is during the three months of the summer (Ethiopia’s rainy season), and collecting the water from the rain demands huge infrastructures like a dam. The infrastructure should be big enough because there is no guaranteed rain in between.
“It rains once in a year for three to four months, and even there are times when it does not rain for the full three month. So, to this end, there needs to be huge dam to compensate for that.” Thus, according to Messele, the government should facilitate locally-made small technologies with affordable prices, facilitate capital loan order to expand irrigation and increase its coverage within the country.
For Messele, the other thing that should be looked into is the issue of land allocation. As long as a farmer is not the owner of his own land, he will not have the motivation to invest in developing the land he cultivates. So, improving the land allocation is important to encourage farmers to invest on irrigating, conserving and overall developing their land, he concludes. All in all, all the experts seem to be certain, even bullish, when it comes to Ethiopia’s prospect of transforming its agriculture sector.
Herald January 23/2019
BY ROBEL YOHANNES
