Africa RISING field days showcase enhancements in crop and forage yields in the Ethiopian highlands

December 23, 2019 Editor 0

In the last quarter of each year,
an Africa RISING project being conducted in the highlands of Ethiopia, holds
series of field days there. This project is conducting research-for-development
activities to narrow gaps in farmer yields of crops and livestock feeds. These
field days, which included ‘experience sharing programs’, were held in four of
Ethiopia’s nine regional states—Amhara, Tigray, Oromia and the Southern
Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR)—in Nov and Dec 2019.

Senior officials from the four
regions, ministry of agriculture, research centers, Universities, development
agencies, nongovernmental organizations, media and zonal and district
administrations as well as local farmers participated in the field days, which showcased
African RISING activities to improve crop performance, seed multiplication, and
use of livestock feed and forage technologies in Endamhoni, Basona, Sinana and
Lemo sites.

The field days helped promote
information exchange and technology transfer among farmers and other stakeholders
in agricultural development in these regions. The farmers participating in the
field days benefited from being linked up with local food and feed processors. Farmers
in Endamehoni benefited from an advanced seed multiplication system for improved
wheat, faba bean and barley varieties; good practices in participatory varietal
selection; technologies for better integration of crop growing and livestock
raising; and livestock feed trials.

Mohammed Ebrahim, the Endamhoni
site coordinator for this project, briefly explained to all those participating
in his field day the various trials being conducted and the specific crop and
forage varieties being tested; he covered best practices in land preparation, planting,
seed and fertilizer applications and weeding.  

The field day at Basona, in the Amhara
region, showcased a wider variety of activities and technologies, including large-scale
seed multiplication of wheat and barley. The participants visited farm
households employing, and benefiting from, improved livestock feed troughs and technologies,
which are yielding better managed animals for live sales and dairy products. And
they had an opportunity to visit the local Angolela Milk Cooperative Union.

‘In the past, I used local seeds
from my own crops or bought them from a neighbor’, said Mr. Getaneh Temtem a
farmer in Basona. ‘The yield from those local varieties were unsatisfactory. Now
I use “wonye” wheat improved variety that I obtained from the Africa RISING project
and the yield and biomass is very impressive.’

Improved varieties of avocado and
better methods for producing ‘enset’ (false banana) were showcased in the field
day at the Lemo site in SNNPR. At this site, the Africa RISING project had introduced
  water
ponds and solar pumps. Use of these irrigation technologies led not only to increased
smallholder incomes but also to use of improved crop varieties. Farmers who
produce wheat in cluster [cluster approach is an initiative that contains
geographically specialized priority commodities across the four major
agricultural regions of the country). These clusters are intended to act as
Centers of Excellence where regions will be supported to maximize production
and productivity] and produce varieties of seed for multiplication shared their
experiences with other farmers. The cluster approach helps to produce quality
seeds, enhance collective action and facilitate use of mechanization.

This series of end-of-year Africa
RISING field days ended at the Sinana site, which is known for its high wheat
production. Participants were shown on-farm adaptation trials of forage crops,
wheat seed multiplication and soil fertility trials.

At the close of the field days,
Kindu Mekonnen, coordinator of the Africa RISING project in the Ethiopian
highlands, called on the farmers to continue their adoption of these new and
research-validated technologies and on government and other officials to scale up
their use so as to benefit more farmers in wider areas.

Click here
to watch videos produced by local media houses of the field day activities in
each of the regions.

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Categories: Agriculture