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Ethiopia
is endowed with abundant agricultural resources. Having an altitude
ranging from 180 meters below sea level to 4,620 meters above sea
level, the country is characterized by diverse physical features
that comprise 18 major agro-ecological zones and 62 sub-zones each
having its own physical and biological potential. Due to these
facts, the country possesses one of the largest and most diverse
genetic resources in the world.
Although the country lies within the tropics, temperatures range
from a mean annual of above 30oc to a mean annual of below 10oc. In
the lowlands, seasonal temperature variations are high, i.e., very
cold in January and very hot in April/May. At higher altitudes with
higher rainfall and greater variations in cloudiness, temperatures
reach up to 25oc during daytime, and, in certain seasons in
particular, drop to below 10oc at nights.
There
are two rainy seasons in the country. These are the short rainy
season, Belg, during the mid-February to the end of April, and the
main rainy season, Meher, covering the months of June to September.
Rainfall distribution throughout the country varies depending on
agro-ecological conditions of each specific area. Rainfall ranges
from 2,200 mm in the south-west, decreasing to below 100 mm in all
low land areas.
Diverse soil types occur in the country. Combisols are predominant
over much of the highlands while vertisols occur in large areas of
the south-eastern highlands and in the south-western parts of the
country. Regosols occupy much of the Somali plateau, Wollo and
Tigray regions.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the Ethiopian economy. The sector
accounts currently for about 45 percent of the GDP, 90 percent of
the total foreign exchange earnings and 85 percent of employment. It
also plays a crucial role in providing raw materials to the local
industry. Ethiopia, with an area of 114 million hectares, is the
ninth largest and third most populous country in Africa.
The
Ethiopian agriculture is basically comprised of smallholder farming
which accounts for more than 90% of the agricultural production and
95% of the total area under crop. 94% of crop and 98% of coffee is
produced by smallholders. The remaining 6% of crop and 2% of coffee
is generated from mechanized farms.
The
major crops grown are cereals, pulses and oil seeds in order of
their importance. Considering the 2001/02 smallholder farmers'
production, cereals (teff, wheat, barely, maize and sorghum)
accounted for 88% of the total crop production and 81% of the crop
land. In the same year, pulses contributed about 10% of the total
production, occupying 13% of the total land cultivated; while oil
seeds production accounted for 2% of the total production occupying
6% of the total land under cultivation.
Presently, it is believed that there are two ways in which the
productivity of the smallholder farmer can be improved in Ethiopia.
One way is to use existing resources of land, labour and capital in
better ways through improved technology, be it biological, chemical
or mechanical. The former is viewed in terms of allocative
efficiency and the latter in terms of technical efficiency within
the same agro-ecological zone.
Over
the last decades, the land/labour ratio has decreased quantitatively
and qualitatively and so has the capital/labour ratio, though not to
the same extent. At the farm family level, the land holding has
shrunk, and the number of oxen available for farming has decreased.
In other words, the mix of resources has changed. In this process of
change, the allocation of resources of the smallholder has become
progressively inefficient because of the increasing under
utilization of labour in agriculture which at any rate was not
compensated by off-farm engagement. As the size of land holding
diminished, the labour input of the farm family decreased since the
technique of production remained unchanged.
The
government has initiated an agricultural development programme with
the objective of closing the country's food gap in the medium term
by attaining a sustainable food production growth at a rate higher
than the population growth. In the food-deficit areas which are
moisture stressed, the government has developed and put to effect a
"Sustainable Agricultural and Environmental Rehabilitation (SAER)"
programme that focuses on the development of small-scale irrigation
mainly through water harvesting. |
