Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.
Ethiopia has experienced impressive agricultural growth and poverty reduction, stemming in part from substantial public investments in agriculture. Yet, the agriculture sector now faces increasing land and water constraints along with other challenges to growth. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System: Past Trends, Present Challenges, and Future Scenarios presents a forward-looking analysis of Ethiopia’s agrifood system in the context of a rapidly changing economy. Growth in the agriculture sector remains essential to continued poverty reduction in Ethiopia and will depend on sustained investment in the agrifood system, especially private sector investment. Many of the policies for a successful agricultural and rural development strategy for Ethiopia are relevant for other African countries, as well. Ethiopia’s Agrifood System should be a valuable resource for policymakers, development specialists, and others concerned with economic development in Africa south of the Sahara.
We study price behavior of vegetables and fruits in Ethiopia over the 15 year period from 2005 to 2019 based on large-scale retail and producer price datasets. This is an important topic given the importance of prices for consumption decisions for these nutritious crops. A number of notable findings come from the analysis. First, prices are rapidly increasing both in real terms and when compared to cereals. At the end of the study period in 2019, vegetables and fruits in real terms were significantly more expensive than 15 years earlier. Especially green leafy vegetables show a significant price rise, likely because few high-yielding varieties of these vegetables have been made available and adopted by producers. Second, part of the rise in prices is explained by increased marketing margins. To understand what accounts for these increases in the marketing margins for fruits and vegetables requires more research, as they contrast with stable or declining margins seen for other food crops over the study period. Third, we see significant seasonality in vegetable prices that is mostly driven by supply factors, but also by demand shifts due to increased demand in fasting periods. Fruit prices do not show such high seasonal variation, however. Fourth, there is significant spatial price variation in the country – vegetable prices are 60 percent more expensive in lowland regions than in the Amhara region, where vegetables are cheapest. Fruit prices in the lowlands are double the prices in the major producing area, the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' (SNNP) region.
This authoritative Encyclopedia provides an innovative approach to theory, reviews, applications and examples relevant to the basic concepts of water science and water management issues in order to facilitate better interdisciplinary cooperation.
Ethiopia has made substantial efforts in the last three decades to increase agricultural productivity through modern input intensification and stimulate overall economic growth. Despite the high growth rates in recent decade, Ethiopia’s overall intensification and yield levels remained below what is considered optimal. This study examines the patterns, trends, and drivers of agricultural intensification and productivity growth during the recent decade (2012 - 2019) using three rounds of representative household data collected from the four main agriculturally important regions of the country. The descriptive results indicate a positive trend in both the adoption rate and intensity of inputs and output, albeit from a low base compared to other contexts and with considerable heterogeneity by access to information, rainfall levels and variability, labor, soil quality, remoteness, among others. The econometric results show significant association between intensification, yield growth, household dietary diversity (a proxy measure for food and nutrition security), and consumer durables. However, the results on the association between current yield levels and per capita consumption expenditures are mixed (i.e., while an increase in cereal yield only improve food consumption expenditures, an increase in cash crops yield mainly improve non-food consumption expenditures). In sum, while the increasing input intensification and the resulting yield gains are associated with improvement in household diets and consumer durables, it falls short to have strong impact on incomes (as measured by total consumption expenditures), indicating that more efforts have to be made to see meaningful impacts on higher order outcomes. Additional welfare improving productivity gains through increased input intensifications may require investments to put in place appropriate fertilizer blends linked with localized soil nutrient requirements, investments to generate locally suited improved seeds and appropriate mechanisms to reach farmers, ways to mitigate production (rainfall) risk, and investments to remodel Ethiopia’s extension system to provided much needed technical support to farmers on production methods.
This report describes: (i) policy measures enacted by the Government of Ethiopia to contain the spread of the virus; (ii) policies and measures to stabilize the functioning of agri-food systems; (iii) potential effects of policies on agri-food systems and vulnerable groups. Finally, the profile also assesses longer-term options for agri-food system policies and investments in Ethiopia so as to make them more resilient.
Increased diversification of rural households into the rural non-farm economy is an important driver of economic growth and structural transformation in countries like Ethiopia where the vast majority of people live in rural areas and are largely dependent on seasonal agriculture. Some of the benefits of diversification include efficient utilization of asset endowments (e.g., labor during dry season) and reduction of risks. In this study we explore the: (i) patterns and trends of diversification, (ii) drivers of diversification including the association between rainfall risk/shocks and diversification, and (iii) welfare effects of diversification during the recent decade using three rounds of representative household data from the four main regions of Ethiopia. We used Cragg’s double-hurdle model, a method that considers the two-step decision making process in diversification (i.e., participation and extent of participation), to identify the determinants of diversification and a fixed-effect and instrumental variable (IV) approaches to understand the links between diversification and household welfare. The descriptive results show that rural households generally adopt a livelihood strategy dominated by farming and that the level of diversification has been stagnant over the period of analysis considered. More importantly, the vast majority of households continue to draw a substantial share of their income from crop production, followed by livestock. The income from non-farm activities accounts only between 17 percent and 23 percent of the total income. The econometrics results show that diversification is positively associated with credit access, membership in social insurance, ownership of mobile phone, relative measure of household wealth, and population density. Conversely, access to relatively large, fertile, and irrigable land discourages diversification into non-farm activities. The analysis on the association between rainfall risks and diversification indicates that rural households use income diversification both as risk mitigation and shock coping strategy. The results on the link between income diversification and household welfare indicate a positive association between diversification and household total consumption expenditure, dietary diversity score, and housing/roof quality. In sum, the results imply the need for a deliberate effort to expand the non-farm economy so as to tap its full potential for employment generation, income growth, and welfare improvements. A starting point could be for agricultural and rural development policies and investments to go beyond promotion of cereal crop production and facilitate participation in high value crop, livestock, aquaculture production. Incentivizing investments in value addition activities that can create and enrich upward and downward linkages in the midstream segment of agricultural value chains is another potential avenue to boost rural non-farm economy.
Through a rigorous, multi-stage analysis, the evidence generated by this corporate evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA)’s business plan for achieving measurable changes in Ethiopia’s agricultural sector, both at micro and macro levels. The assessment also identifies areas for renewed and refined emphasis, as well as strategic planning for the future planning and monitoring of ATA’s work. This evaluation finds that ATA has achieved many of the outcomes it is being measured against, in terms of input use, extension services, and agricultural technology. The outcomes observed point to the effective removal of bottlenecks in the rural agricultural economy that have improved the linkages between producers, input markets and agricultural services. The improvements in those priority areas are reflected in productivity gains for certain priority crops and in market orientation positions that confirm ATA’s effectiveness in connecting producers to markets. FAO’s evaluation finds positive macroeconomic effects from ATA interventions, helping to ameliorate the reduction in gross domestic product growth, and also supporting the development of agroindustry and transportation services.
We combine in-person survey data collected in February 2018 with phone survey data collected in June and September 2021 to study how dairy value chains in Ethiopia have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the major dairy value chain connecting farmers in North and West Shewa as well as peri-urban and urban producers in and around Addis Ababa to consumers in Addis Ababa, we applied a cascading survey approach in which we collected data at all levels of the value chain: dairy farmers, rural wholesalers, and urban retailers.
We combine in-person survey data collected in February 2020 (i.e., just before the pandemic was declared) with phone survey data collected in March 2021 (i.e., one year into the pandemic) and August 2021 (i.e., approximately 18 months into the pandemic) to study how vegetable value chains in Ethiopia have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on the major vegetable value chain connecting farmers in East Shewa zone to consumers in Addis Ababa, we applied a cascading survey approach in which we collected data at all levels of the value chain: vegetable farmers, urban wholesalers, and retailers.
