Washington, D.C: Usage of certified seeds, improved farming techniques and a guaranteed market for the wheat crop led to an increase in smallholder Ethiopian farmers’ wheat yields by an average 14 percent, according to a new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Overall, the 14 percent increase in yields is relatively substantial, since farmers were encouraged to simply use existing technologies. This research shows a package intervention, such as the Wheat Initiative, that combines improved inputs, techniques and a guaranteed market for smallholder farmers’ crop can help simultaneously overcome the multiple adoption constraints small farmers often face, and enhance crop yields,” said Alan de Brauw, researcher and co-author of the study.
These findings are part of the study to evaluate the impact of the Wheat Initiative, a program rolled out by the Ethiopian Agricultural ministry and the Agricultural Transformation Agency in 2013 to help smallholder farmers increase their wheat productivity. If such a package realized a 14 percent increase in wheat yields across Ethiopia’s entire wheat growing, it would translate into an additional half a million tons of wheat produced.
The Wheat Initiative provided a package of three broad interventions to 2,000 small farmers across 41 woredas (districts) in the four-major wheat producing regions. Interventions included improved inputs such as certified wheat seed, fertilizers and, gypsum to improve soil structure; improved techniques such as lower seeding rates, row planting, and balanced fertilizer use; and thirdly, a government commitment to buy farmers’ wheat at the market rate or above to reduce marketing risk for farmers.
The study titled, “The Impact of the Use of New Technologies on Farmers’ Wheat Yield in Ethiopia,” and co-authored by IFPRI researchers Alan de Brauw, Tanguy Bernard, Nicholas Minot, and Gashaw Tadesse Abate, was recently published in the journal, Agricultural Economics.
Implementation of the Wheat Initiative was successful in making certified seeds and fertilizer accessible to small farmers and increasing their uptake, but only 61 percent of the intervention group adopted row planting, according to the study. The intervention group reported lower seeding rates – which lowered input costs and seed competition for requisite nutrients – than the comparison group. The study, conducted over two crop seasons, collected data from 504 farmers, who were spilt randomly into three groups: the first, intervention group, received all three interventions in the package; the second group received only marketing assistance, and the third group was the control or the comparison group.
“Our findings suggest Ethiopian farmers may gradually adopt and sustain improved agricultural practices under the Wheat Initiative. Yield intensification through the promotion of such packaged approaches is quite possible,” said de Brauw.
The Ethiopian government expected the yields under the program to double, however, such high expectations may not be realistic in the case of Ethiopian wheat farming.
“Increases in actual productivity almost always lag behind those observed in experimental trials, due to several socioeconomic, physical, and biological constraints,” said de Brauw. These constraints include a lower likelihood of farmers adopting certified seeds and fertilizers; physical factors like low and poor distribution of rainfall in lowlands areas, soil erosion, disease and weeds; and resistance to change from traditional farming methods like hand broadcasting seeds —all of which together account for lower yields than in the trials.
Ethiopia has consistently lagged in average wheat yields in Africa and beyond. In 2012, Ethiopia’s wheat yields were on average 29 percent below neighboring Kenya, 13 percent below the African average, and 32 per cent below the world average. The study highlights some ways in which wheat yields can be improved to close these gaps, even if not to the level the government desires.
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The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) seeks sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty. IFPRI was established in 1975 to identify and analyze alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting the food needs of the developing world, with emphasis on low-income countries and on the poorer groups in those countries. www.ifpri.org.