BY MENGESHA AMARE
Ethiopia is working hard to convert itself from recipient to exporter (benefactor) of agricultural products such as wheat. This step has recently been witnessed as the country started exporting wheat to neighboring countries. Needless to state, agriculture has been the mainstay of Ethiopian economy since long back.
However, this pivotal sector has still followed a retrograde means of running activities solely by the agrarian society doing business as usual. Here, wise resource management, innovation in animal feed and agriculture technology, and modernizing and precision farming practices have to be at the heart of the new agricultural order if Ethiopia is to bring about change regarding the sector and get it well transformed.
Keeping this very indispensible concept in mind, The Ethiopian Herald had a stay with Solomon Jiregna, an agricultural economist graduated from Haramaya University, and working for a private firm, to gain professionally viewed information about agricultural transformation and other related aspects.
He said, “A number of steps have to be well exercised in Ethiopia to meaningfully transform the agriculture sector. Of the many factors that need to be underscored finding the right starting points for change, prioritizing and differentiating strategies, looking for market-driven opportunities for farmers, identifying and mobilizing change agents, promoting pragmatic approach with an investor mind-set and formulating enabling policies have to come to the forefront along this line so as to make real difference regarding the agriculture sector.”
True, transforming the agriculture sector has been one of the best ways to improve the lives of millions through creating many more jobs, raising incomes, reducing malnutrition, and kicking-start the economy on a path to middle-income trajectory. “In fact, almost all very developed and industrialized nations began their economic ascent with an agricultural transformation. We can cite nations which have come up with dramatic difference following agricultural transformation such as Brazil, China, and Vietnam and doubled the value of their agriculture sector,” Solomon said.
As to Solomon, for many countries including ours agricultural transformation has not advanced as planned or has stalled, and navigating the complexity of a transformation is invariably tough for the Ethiopian government, even though it prioritizes agricultural investment and recognizes how important it is to get right. In addition to traditional economic development and poverty reduction goals, the Ethiopian government is also focusing its agricultural transformation plans on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by considering, for example, climate-smart strategies, job creation for many citizenries, nurturing biodiversity, among others.
Solomon further elucidated that the drivers of agricultural transformation are multidimensional, interrelated, and change over time, but they can be organized into categories to provide a better opportunity for pragmatic diagnostics and decision making on national priorities. “Institutional framework changes, workable policy archetypes and governing mechanisms, political environment and commitment for real change can significantly influence the likelihood of accelerating an agricultural transformation.”
“Hence, the government needs to focus on what is needed to translate the national agricultural plan into on-the-ground impression. This includes the way in which the country manages decision making and progress against targets as well as how it uses change agents especially the youth segment of the society to support the large-scale behavior change among smallholder farmers that underpins a successful agricultural transformation,” he added.
Besides, he said, readiness for agricultural transformation matters the most via identifying a set of common institutional, organizational, and political components that increase the likelihood of success for a government’s good agricultural transformation policies and investments. Developing an agricultural transformation plan demands prioritization and should focus on the changes that are most likely to kick-start rural economic growth.
“Ethiopia is experiencing transformation that shows clear focus in terms of crops, transformation enablers, change forerunners and/or prime actors as well as ecological dynamism. It has also embarked on a number of different goals, including growth in agro-processing, unemployment reduction, lowering poverty incidence, ensuring food self-sufficiency, bolstering economic growth, increasing exports, or lowering rates of malnutrition,” he underlined.
As to Solomon, the success of any agricultural transformation relies on how well millions of smallholders, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises can be helped to change farming practices as quickly and effectively as possible. A good agricultural transformation plan identifies public investments designed to catalyze additional private-sector engagement, farming community awareness of technological dynamism and myriads of agricultural input utilization. Agricultural transformation is more than changes in farming practices as it is all about catalyzing transformation of a country’s rural economy.
The most important factor in the soft side is the willingness of the government, donors, farmers, companies, and civil society organizations to take risks and change behaviors to pursue a better outcome in due course of transforming the sector, he added. Besides, commitment from the highest levels of government is needed before and during the development of agricultural transformation plans as securing high-level determination will ensure the development process targeting at reinvigorating agricultural production and productivity.
In private-sector transformation, he said leadership training and peer networks have to be made available, and in large-scale public-sector transformations, where the goal is to improve the lives of millions of citizens, the return on making the sector mechanized and highly advanced as well as investment for concerned bodies properly lead the proper flow of activities as well as all rounded skill building is tremendous. As to Solomon, an agricultural transformation is not just a planning exercise for it is essential to the future well-being of Ethiopia, too, and therefore also to concrete way of buttressing a more equitable economic development.
Agriculture has played an important role in the development of Ethiopian economy. Today, agriculture is the largest employer in the country, and agricultural labor productivity has grown faster. Agricultural transformation in Ethiopia will likely continue identifying the weaknesses and strengths of the past trends, though the pace and direction of change will be punctuated by emerging challenges and opportunities related to environmental stress, climate change, market instability, future technological breakthroughs, and the rise of global value chains, he remarked.
A strategy that pays greater attention to the role of agriculture in development can help the poor trace pathways out of poverty through improved livelihoods in agriculture, market access for smallholders, increase in skilled employment in rural areas, and establishment of efficient value chains, he added.
He said, “Basically, industrialization is a transformation away from an agricultural-or resource-based economy, toward an economy based on mechanized manufacturing. It is usually associated with a greater average income and improved living standards through the means of industrialization.”
Industrialization can therefore be driven by a combination of factors including government policy, labor-saving inventions, entrepreneurial ambitions, and a demand for goods and services. It has profound implications for the population, causing a wave of migration from small farms to cities and towns where jobs can be found, he added.
He further said that technological solutions deliver significant influences towards transforming the challenges of agricultural supply chain management into opportunities. Infrastructure, training and qualifications, an adequate structural and legislative operating environment, and willingness to implement new technologies can also play a decisive role in fostering agricultural transformation.
Agricultural transformation is therefore the process that leads to increased farm productivity, making farming commercially viable and strengthening intertwined with other sectors of the economy. For agricultural transformation, there are key areas that have to be given due attention, and farmers’ access to financial resources is one of the major challenges that needs to be well dealt with in Ethiopia to come up with real difference regarding the sector.
Undeniably, he stated that mechanization in the agricultural sector consists of using machinery, tools and equipment to reduce post-harvest losses, get good quality products and increase the value of the farm product. It helps increase the economic benefits for the farming community who can efficiently use their manpower, reduce input costs and increase the value of output, adopt diversification of crops and in turn, improve their welfare. The major objective of mechanization in agriculture is to augment farmlands output by increasing per-hectare productivity and replacing the efforts of animal or human labor with mechanical hegemony.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 28 JUNE 2023
