BY ALAZAR SHIFERAW
Ethiopia has planned to be self-sufficient in wheat production. It targets not to import wheat in the near future. Consequently, the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), apart from rain-fed production, has been engaging and pursuing to expand wheat irrigation projects in the country. Although it is well known that Ethiopia is the main wheat producer in the Sub-Saharan Africa countries, it still imports wheat from abroad. It is one of the major cereal crops in the country’s highland areas.
Recently, wheat irrigation project coordinator at the MoA Dr.Daniel Muleta said the current wheat irrigation projects have been successfully carried out in some parts of the country. The irrigation projects carried out in Amhara, Oromia and Afar states have shown a promising result to achieve the country’s wheat self-sufficiency program ambition in the near future.
Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR) document states that Ethiopia’s prospect of wheat self-sufficiency within 1-2 years can be possible because of two favorable and realistic scenarios: increasing wheat productivity in the rain-fed agro-ecologies and expansion of production to the irrigable lowland areas. Raising wheat productivity, in the rain-fed areas of 1.8 million hectares from the current 2.8 tons per hectare to 3.8 tons/hectare could bring about an additional increase of 1.8 million tons of wheat grain to the national food basket per annum, i.e. exactly what our country has imported in 2018.
Under the second scenario of expanding wheat production to the lowland agro-ecologies, Ethiopia needs to bring about 400, 000 hectares of land under irrigation with average productivity of 4.4 tons / hectare to make the county self-sufficient.
Therefore, the practical scenario should combine options of both vertical and horizontal increments of wheat production in order to make Ethiopia’s wheat import a history. Cognizant to the aforementioned facts, the government has already identified key priority intervention areas to increase productivity of small-scale farmers and expand large scale commercial production of wheat.
The top priorities identified include: development of small and large scale irrigation schemes, financing effectual supply of agricultural in-puts, improving agricultural production methods using mechanization, post-harvest loss reduction and natural resources management.
Accordingly, the government has set a goal to enhance local wheat production, attain wheat self-sufficiency and end the import by 2021. This could be possible mainly through wheat land area expansion that is readily and widely available in the lowland agro-ecologies of the country particularly in the Awash, Omo and Shebele river basins.
EIAR, in collaboration with its strategic partners, has long been striving to change the production system of cereals by developing wheat technologies suitable for the irrigated lowland areas in sequence with cotton and or soybean.
Werer Agricultural Research Center is the coordinating center for lowland irrigated wheat research in Ethiopia. Thus, Werer Research Center has released, since 2008, seven bread wheat and one durum wheat varieties suitable for lowland irrigated agro-ecologies. More than 100 bread and durum wheat varieties suitable for highland rain-fed agro-ecologies have been released since the 1950’s.
Research findings from Werer clearly showed that improved packages of high yielding, heat and stress tolerant wheat varieties could yield up to 65 tons/hectare indicating the possibility and suitability of the hot lowland irrigated areas for bumper harvest of wheat, it said.
However, wheat seed is the vehicle to transfer improved varieties to farmers. Availability of adequate and quality seed is a critical requirement for sustainable wheat production. Weak wheat seed production and delivery systems are often mentioned as major constraints to wheat production in Ethiopia.
If the wheat seed system is robust, then the wheat subsector would be strengthened resulting in a bumper harvest, which in turn leads to enterprises are responsible for large scale certified seed production. In addition, a wide range of semiformal or intermediate seed sector actors represented by local seed businesses are engaged in production and distribution of Quality Declared Seed.
EIAR in collaboration with development partners has been providing support on the development of efficient, gender responsive community based wheat seed production and delivery systems. Although there are several public enterprises for the rain-fed wheat seed production, lack of public seed enterprises responsible for irrigated wheat seed production has seriously constrained supply of seed and thus wheat self-sufficiency and food security, it said. The various entities of the agricultural research system are responsible for early generation seed production.
The major focus of wheat initiative is to radically improve wheat production by deploying best-bet wheat technologies in the major wheat growing agro-ecologies of Ethiopia. Improved irrigated wheat technology demonstration was started on a hectare of land around Werer Research Center in the Afar State in 2012.
Since then, the promotion activities were progressively increased over years and widely expanded to other states such as Oromia and SNNP by involving many farmers, agro-pastorals and large scale commercial farms. During 2019/20 cropping season, land area covered by irrigated wheat in different states surpassed over fifteen thousand hectares and the Afar states takes the lion’s share followed by Oromia and SNNP.
The intervention with best irrigated wheat technologies has brought about a significant outcome on wheat productivity land area and job creation. Wheat yield increased from 2.9 tons /hectare in 2012 to 4.4 tons /hectare in 2019, which is an increase of 51.7percent. Irrigated wheat land area also increased by many folds, but there is still enormous potential for more area of expansion, it said .
With regard to job creation, dissemination and popularization of improved wheat technology has created many additional jobs in the intervention areas and along the wheat value chain. The enhanced and best-bet wheat production system created many new and good jobs along the down- and up- stream in the value chain including production, aggregation, storage, milling, processing, logistics, food preparation, bakeries, pastries, restaurants and other related services.
This indicates that many on-farm and off-farm employment opportunities are emerging because of the interventions on wheat. Mechanized wheat production also created job opportunities for tractor.
Thus, in Ethiopia wheat production provides on-and off-farm job opportunities that can absorb quite a large number of employees. While the majority of Ethiopian youth aspires to see its future outside agriculture, many good job opportunities remain in agriculture particularly in wheat production along its value chain.
However, making wheat production activities attractive and competitive, through improved technologies, innovation and investment, are very crucial, it said.
The Ethiopian Herald 20 March 2021
