Ethiopia plans to harvest 2.6 mln hectares using cluster farming
Ethiopia has planned to cultivate 2.6 million hectares of agricultural products in 2014/15 Ethiopian fiscal year using cluster farming.
A tweet by the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) on Sunday reported that 1.9 million farmers will benefit and be able to increase the productivity of wheat from 30 to 45 quintals and maize from 40 to 60 quintals in hectare using cluster farming technique in the coming harvest season.
The country’s agro-ecological diversity, according to the ATA 2020/21 annual report, makes it suitable for growing over 100 types of crops, with 74.3 million hectares of arable land spread across 18 major agroecological zones at altitudes ranging from 148 meters to 4,620 meters above sea level.
Ethiopia’s GDP from agriculture is expected to reach 715.92 billion Birr by the end of 2022, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts’ forecasts.
To realize the full potential of agriculture and boost the low yields of Ethiopian smallholder farmers by organizing them into crop-specific clusters, the Agricultural Commercialization Cluster (ACC) was launched in 2019 and set to span a period of five years until 2024.
