Ethiopia is endowed with rich natural resources, a plenty of water, soil and other suitable agro-ecological conditions even labors;however, Ethiopia’s agricultural production has for long remained under the expected.
Once upon a time, Ethiopia had supported other countries, the reverse is true now. Yet, over 7.9 people are under safety net program excluding those affected by draught and conflict. Traditional ways of farming,shortage of input, limited infrastructures and market system, lack oftechnology, poor resource mobilization and information flow among stakeholders vertically or horizontally, absence of inspiration… are themajor issues.
Still, about 17 million farmers still use traditional farming techniques. About 14 million oxen are tired on farm. The nation has about 74-mln hectare land to becultivated, but we did on 14 million hectare. In addition, despite having adiverse and a large number of livestock populations, the largest in Africa,Ethiopia did not reap the benefits due to a variety of issues including lowgenetic potential, disease prevalence and feed shortage.
Some new countries, emerging after Ethiopia, like China, Korea, and othercountries engaged to growth. The secret of such countries’ growth isforwarding accelerate agriculture.
Researchers have identified the major stages of agriculture: subsistence agriculture, getting agriculture moving, agriculture as a contributor togrowth, integrating agriculture in to the macro
economy, agriculture inindustrial economy.
Regarding this, Ethiopia is in “Getting agriculture moving” stage andaims to reach “Agriculture as a contributor to growth” stage over the next 5-10 years.
International best practices show that allocating resources on highly impactful initiatives is a key step to transforming the agriculture. The nation has observed the experiences from China, India, Vietnam, and, Brazil.
Off course, Ethiopia’s budget allocation to the agriculture sector might seem significant comparing to peer African countries. However, budget alone cannot capture the spending requirement.
The nation is to eye the goal of ‘Investment Prioritization Initiative’ toaccelerate the agricultural transf -ormation as well as the economic growth of Ethiopia. The overall objective is to identify, estimate and prioritize key investments needed in the sector over the next 6 years to meet investment gap in order for the agriculture sector to be a major contributor to the economy of the country.
The ultimate goal of ‘agriculture investment prioritization initiative’ is tocontribute to the economic growth of the country to achieve the middle-income status. Five overarching strategic objectives to be considered for prioritizing the investments; (1) increase in market-driven agricultural production and productivity, (2) improve food security and disaster risk management, (3) improve value addition and access to domestic and international markets, (4) improve management, conservation and utilization of natural resources sustainably, (5) improve institutional capacity and enabling environment for agricultural development.
MoA needs to attract and acquire the necessary funds, promotes convergence of domestic and external sources of funds wisely.
Studies has been proposed and identified what to do to transform agriculture, under the major components; Agriculture development, Livestock resource development, Natural resource management, Agriculture input and product marketing, even minister’s office and itsaffiliated institutions.
The Agricultural development focuses on increasing production and productivity towards meeting agro-industrial raw material needs, export demand and import substitution beyond maintaining food and nutrition security. Moreover, it needs to enhance the agricultural input and output marketing system and to improve inputs quality.
Several initiatives are under implementation to achieve these objectives; for instance, AGP with an investment of 890 MN USD being deployed across 157 woredas of the four major regions and recently also in 2 woredas of Benishagul Gumuz to scale up, promote tested agricultural machinery, andestablish mechanization service centers for strategic crop, livestock, soiltypes, and gender.
Currently, MoA is focusing on several initiatives including the development of a national Livestock Master Plan (LMP), which sets targets for different livestock commodities.
Securing food and livelihood is extricable linked to the exploitation of landand natural resources in rural Ethiopia where land degradation is awidespread problem. Natural resources such as land, water, and forest arethe foundation of all economic activities including food security and other necessities. The sector is already addressing these challenges through initiatives such as the Sustainable Land Management Project (SLMP).
Develop small-scale irrigation (design, infrastructure building and supplychain enhancement), rehabilitate problematic soils and reverse organicmatter depletion, scale up watershed management and agroforestry development, strategies and institutional arrangements to create enabling environment for sustainable natural resource management.
This time, MoA eyes the way forward to address challenges and recur the agricultural sector and that seems to be now committed to mechanize agriculture by deploying researchers and has conducted hot discussions with different stakeholders to make mutual responsibility by stimulating andinspiring them.
Oumer Hussien, Minister of Agriculture, believes that agriculture could notbe transformed unless joint hands of multi sectors are not involved. “Wehave conducted studies and identified what kinds of challenges occur in thesector; what kind of resources Ethiopian agriculture needs to bemechanized”, the minster stated.
According to Oumer, the sector has beenarranged and renewed working arrangements to have comfort-working environments. Regarding to this, new design of the whole compound ofMoA is drafted, Oumer said.
As to Oumer, to enable exchange information on time technologically (by means of tablet) from central to kebele and vice versa, ministry ofagriculture has been arranged a project to conduct.
“We do not develop agriculture hiding our problem rather we should list outand announce for stakeholders to get solution gradually”, he said. As a result, MoA is doing to increase clarity and transparency, promote rapid learning and application of corrective actions, provide a framework toassess progress and reinforce mutual responsibilities.
The minister told to this writer since it is difficult getting growth of all agricultural sectors once, three major areas (wheat as a majority community consumption, coffee as a key mechanism of export, and poultryas easy doing business and nutritional value ) have been identified.
MoA is doing to make zero import of wheat from other countries by 2023, Oumer recommended. Growing wheat at the lowland areas is proved as productive i.e. 44 quintal /hectare averagely; there, pastoralists, unusually,will practice growing wheat using technologies, Oumer underlined. “We expect the producers not only to subsidize but also to commercialize”, he said.
As to the minister, a framework has been organized that will be endorsed soon by ministers of counsels that enable for empowering private sectorswho have capital and technology will get land from land owners by meansof contract farming to engage in agriculture development.
Finally, Oumer calls all stakeholders to devote mutual responsibility to mechanize Ethiopian agriculture as economic paradigm.
The Ethiopian Herald May 04/ 2011
BY BAHIRU SETEGNE
