The Big Draw
Since the Ethiopian famine of the early 1970s, hardly a year has passed without news about food deficits affecting some part of the East African country. A long civil war, unsuitable agricultural policies and repeated droughts, combined with rapid population growth, created the image of a country firmly in the grips of periodic famine. Yet, as in other countries that managed to progress from starvation to food security, new technologies might help Ethiopia's farmers better feed the nation. An animal-drawn broadbed maker, improved crop varieties and fertilizer could feed the whole of today's Ethiopia, says ILCA.
With 12.6 million ha of vertisols Ethiopia ranks third in vertisols abundance in Africa after Sudan and Chad. About eight million ha (or 63%) of all Ethiopia's vertisols are in the highlands but only about two million of the highland black cottonsoils are cropped. Farmers use an animal-drawn traditional plow called maresha for cultivation. The implement does little to improve surface drainage on the seasonally waterlogged fields, so some farmers resort to working the loosened soils by hand to make raised beds with furrows. Yet, even this back-breaking labour does not produce satisfactory results.
Despite natural drainage, the excessive moisture trapped in the vertisols early in the rainy season is more than traditional teff, wheat, barley and faba bean crops can stand. They are thus planted later in the rainy season to avoid waterlogging. As a result, yields are low and, the longer the land is without vegetation cover, the more it is subject to erosion and nutrient loss.
To help farmers overcome these problems, Ethiopia's Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR), Alemaya University of Agriculture (AUA, the Ministry of Agriculture, Environmental Protection and /Development (MOAEPD), the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) embarked in the late 1980s on joint research under the sponsorship of the Swiss Development Corporation, CARITAS-Switzerland, Finland, Oxfam-USA and Norway.
The consortium came up with a technology package comprising a land-shaping implement, improved varieties of wheat, maize and other crops and fertilizer. The main component of the package is the land-shaping broadbed maker that consists of two mareshas tied together in a triangular form and metal wings slipped, one each, over the steel-tipped ends of the mareshas. The wings shape the plowed land into 80-by-15-centimeter broadbeds with furrows, while a chain hooked to the wings flattens the soil and buries the seed on top of the broadbeds.
Along with its labor efficiency, the broadbed maker has two other important advantages. It increases evacuation of excess water, and does not require very soft soils as when broadbeds are made manually. Farmers can thus start preparing seedbeds when the soil is still wet and compact and, consequently, sow their crops earlier in the season to obtain higher yields.
The difference that the new technology can make is enormous. Increased wheat yields of 100% per ha have been achieved on farm (IAR, Global 2000). Assuming 25% of Ethiopia's vertisols is planted under a single wheat crop during the second half of the growing season, wheat grain production in the country will amount to 1.26 million tons. Replacing traditional wheat with improved, early-sown cultivars on drained Vertisols can increase wheat production to 5.22 million tons from the same area.
About 20% of Ethiopia's total wheat output could be produced with the new technology in the central Shewa Province. Two other wheat-producing regions, Bale and Eastern Hararge which contribute about 150,000 tons each with the traditional system, could increase their contributions to 600,000 tons each. The improved technology has been estimated to satisfy the calorie requirements of 25 million people, compared with 6 million for the traditional system. This suggests that cultivation of 50% to 75% of the total Vertisol land area in Ethiopia with an improved wheat crop could potentially support the entire present population of the country.
But there is one snag, involving animal traction. If better care is not taken of the animals that provide the power for cultivation, the production system in the highlands may not be sustainable over the long term.
The quality of feed available in the system is extremely low, and the area of natural grazing is decreasing. There is also evidence of deforestation and land degradation. At the same time, demand for livestock products such as milk, meat and power is increasing because of the large number of people the system has to support. To escape this vicious circle, the total amount of feed in the system must be increased either through capital investment -- which few highland farmers can afford -- or a technology that can increase both food and fodder production per unit land area by combining better drainage with sequential or rotational cropping of cereals and legumes.
On better drained highland vertisols, farmers can grow two cereal crops in rotation followed by a pulse crop such as chickpea, roughpea or fieldpea. Farmers are receptive to experimenting with forage legumes to improve the quality of crop residues. Besides, early planting of mixtures of improved crop and forage varieties on drained Vertisols lead to rapid establishment of ground cover which helps reduce soil erosion. ILCA has had positive results with wheat and clover as intercrops and is testing the technology on-farm at various altitudes. "If more and better feed is put into the system," argue scientists, "it would be possible to reduce stocking rates without lowering the offtake or milk, meat and draft power, thereby improving the sustainability of agricultural production in the Ethiopian highlands.
The simple, low-tech broadbed maker package is fast becoming an important tool for achieving the ultimate objective -- breaking the cycle of poverty in highland Ethiopia. Over 10,000 highland farmers have registered for broadbed makers; more than 3,000 used them in 1994. The technology is being extended together with improved crop varieties and fertilizer to Ethiopian farmers by the Ministry of Agriculture and by Oxfam America, Global 2000 and other NGOs.
(ILCA press release)