Ethiopia gives due attention to transform its agriculture especially after the implementation of the two consecutive Growth and Transformation Plans (GTPI and II) by introducing different modern mechanisms to boost its productivity from year to year.
Cluster Farming, also known as Agricultural Commercialization Cluster (ACC) is one method introduced recently which is playing a key role in boosting agricultural productivity of the country during its pilot phase.
Crop Development Director with Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) Esayas Lemma says so far 198 woredas were engaged in cluster farming as a pilot level under the support and follow-up of Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA).
Esayas added that since this farming method boosts productivity, helps to save the cost and energy of farmers plus link smallholder farming with the market, ATA and MoA increased the number of woredas from 198 to 450 woredas to implement cluster farming for the coming five years since 2019 harvest season.
According to Esayas 300 woredas engaged to the cluster farming is supported by ATA and 150 of them under the follow-ship of MoA.
ACC helps to fill the identified missing elements of the agricultural sector like mechanization, input provision and other supports as the main challenges in productivity of the agriculture sector, Esayas said.
Agricultural Commercialization Cluster Director at Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) Techane Adugna said that cluster approach is a sub-system farming introduced to Ethiopian agriculture aiming at sustainable productivity of smallholder farmers and transforming the country’s agricultural sector by changing the traditional way of farming.
Techane said that as the country planned to transform the agriculture sector sustainably, it was decided to build the capacity of smallholder farmers through multidimensional support since 95 percent of the country’s farmers are smallholder farmers. Hence, Agricultural Commercialization Cluster (ACC) was introduced to Ethiopian agriculture in 2015/16 as a pilot level mainly focusing on geographic concentration through cluster approach.
Meanwhile, the ACC director noted that the concept of ACC is to bring sustainable change on smallholder farming by creating an interconnected system of value chain alliance support. It gives focus to fill gaps in productivity, in producing market-oriented commodities and to create market-small holder farmers linkage, he said.
According to Techane by developing Farmers Production Cluster (FPC), the end goal of ACC is to create full package agricultural researchrecommendation user of clusters and at the end of the day to develop their capacity to engage in contract farming by specializing in specific commodities.
The support of ACC is all rounded in pre-harvest preparation, in harvesting, post-harvest up to market linkage.
Considering all this, the cluster approach was started in 198 woredas of the country in 2016 as a pilot program by holding volunteer farmers focusing on the value chain cluster. At its initial time, the program focused on a woreda level cluster where a cluster contains five to 20 woredas and after that, the woredas distributed the plan. But since the 2018 harvest season, FPC was established to implement full package farming.
Full Package means implementing all research recommendations in using fertilizer in quantity and quality, improved seed, way of plowing, line sowing, weeding and other necessary issues based on scientific recommendations.
FPC consists of 30 up to 60 farmers formed aiming at suitable and proper implementation of full package farming. By forming this FPC, in 2018 it was implemented in 566,000 farmers across four states, Oromia, Amhara, Tigray, and SNNPR specifically in 167 woredas by selecting 10 commodities, Techane noted.
The outcome was so interesting in boosting productivity, minimizing the cost and energy of farmers, producing market-oriented commodities and easy to support and input provision to the farmers.
As ATA evaluating the pilot of FPC implementation by its own assessment productivity per hectare averagely increased from 22 quintals to 36 quintals in smallholder farmers on selected crops. Before this implementation, only 29 percent of produced crops by smallholder farmers were provided to market but after this implementation, it scaled up to 56 percent. Still, the outcome is assessed by third party to get proper data, Techane said.
Since the pilot program shows good improvements and the farmers also understand its benefit, ATA scaled out from 198 to 300 woredas and moved the pilot phase of ACC to the full implementation phase. The implementation phase of ACC is started in this 2019 harvest season by participating 1.6 million farmers for five years under 30 clusters, according to the director.
Techane added that ATA has a plan to scale up the number of farmers every year and at the end of the program it planned to reach the number of farmers engaged in the cluster approach to 2.5 million.
Input provision through estimated assessment, provision of loan, training, solving the available challenges based on value chain are the supports of ACC for farmers, according to the director. The goal of ACC is to able FPCs to commercialize company level bypassing the four stages of coordination, intermediate, advanced and commercialization levels.
According to MoA Crop Development Director, Esayas Ethiopia has planned to earn 406 million quintal product from 13.5 million hectare land by 2019 Meher (harvest) season and its hope to attain the plan is the implementation of cluster farming which is the major intervention of the year in agriculture which is playing key role in boosting agricultural productivity of the country during its pilot phase.
The implementation phase of ACC started by refining some of its methods during the pilot phase by introducing geographic cluster farming of FPC and scaled up the woredas to 300 and beneficiary farmers to 1.6 million for five years.
The Ethiopian Herald July 27/2019
BY DARGIE KAHSAY
