National Strategy for Ethiopia’s Agricultural Extension System.

This National Strategy for Ethiopia’s Agricultural Extension System is the first document of its kind developed by the Government to enhance the agricultural productivity and production of smallholders. The Vision expressed by the Strategy is "To sustain a market-led and pluralistic extension system that improves the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists". The consequent Mission aims to contribute to agricultural growth and poverty reduction by installing pluralistic extension system, ensuring transfer and adoption of improved technologies and good practices. Main goal of the Strategy is to contribute to the attainment of food security and poverty reduction in the country and ensure better rural life. To achieve the goal, the Government aims to transform Ethiopia’s agriculture through implementation of pluralistic extension system and by providing demand-driven and market-led extension services to male, female and youth farmers, pastoralists and agro pastoralists
To help eliminate hunger and food insecurity, main interventions are directed to (i) promote a proper knowledge management; (ii) guarantee better access to production technologies and sustainable market systems, supported by appropriate commercial investment, public finance and the regulatory environment; and (iii) increase access to health services and adequate food storage, particularly through gender-oriented training on nutrition-dense food production and consumption, improving dietary diversity and knowledge of food preparation, and improving child breast feeding and pregnant women nutrition.
In order to make agriculture more productive and sustainable, the Strategy proposes to (i) make up-to-date agricultural information available and improve agricultural knowledge and innovation management systems; (ii) maximize the potentials of livestock through improving extension services targeting cattle, beef, dairy, camel, small ruminants, poultry, and aquatic animals (fish); (iii) diversify the production system from rain-fed to irrigated agriculture; (iv) promote push–pull technology using locally available plants in a mixed cropping system to manage insect pests and parasitic weeds, particularly in maize and sorghum-based agriculture, using for the “push” nutritious fodders for livestock from which households generate a lot of income and food; (iv) straighten the role of research institutes in generating new technologies and innovations and conduct on-farm verification and studies on extension methods system to increase productivity of farmers by the adoption of technologies generated from the research; (v) cultivate and produce competent skilled human power to respond to the diverse needs of farmers and pro-actively move the agricultural development through capacity building programs; (vi) promote regular crop rotation, crop residue management, crop associations and double cropping that have the potential to replenish nutrients, reduce plant diseases and insect pests; and (vii) use moisture stress tolerant crops, together with introduction of new crops, use of water harvest techniques, rehabilitation of terraces, improved irrigation techniques, improved water points in pastoral areas.
The entire Strategy is meant to reduce rural poverty and all interventions are aimed at this purpose.
To enable more inclusive and productive agricultural and food systems, the Strategy aims at transforming subsistence smallholder farming to commercialized farming system through the implementation of commodity-based extension approach and market-oriented extension services by (i) providing market-demanded technologies, inputs and information to smallholder farmers and other private investors to encourage a better access to more reliable markets; (ii) promote an extension system interactive and responsive to farmers’ needs by encouraging active participation in problem identification, priority planning, implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation; (iii) transform the farmer training centers (FTCs) into farmer-owned, farmer-driven enterprises to ensure both commercial viability and a sense of community ownership; (iv) use farmers' groups as platforms for the promotion of decentralized planning, implementation and monitoring of extension services; (v) increase farmers' organizations, taking advantage of farmers’ indigenous knowledge; (vi) enhance the provision of demand-driven, peer to peer learning and contextualized extension services targeting different categories of farmers (youth, women, rich, poor etc.); (vii) provide extension services along the entire value chain of a commodity, in order to strengthen market linkages among producers, agro-industries, processors and retailers; (viii) give special attention and support to women by encouraging their participation in the extension system and ensuring services provided address their special needs; (ix) conduct gender and environment focused interventions to provide gender and environment friendly extension services; (x) promote financial literacy and improved access to finance through establishing saving and credit groups and/or cooperatives in rural communities and linking with micro-finance institutions, with particular reference to women and young farmers; and (xi) promote both on-farm and off-farm income generating micro-enterprises.
Resilience of livelihoods to disasters will be increased through (i) the diversification of the agricultural products grown by a local community that would also help to conserve the existing natural resources; (ii) implementation of climate smart agriculture and application of climate friendly technologies and watershed development approaches; and (iii) enhancement of physical conservation on natural resources through improving advisory services by implementing soil bunds, stone-faced soil bund, terracing, channels' control and rehabilitation.