(3 minutes read)
· Ethiopia managed to get a bumper wheat crop this year riding on the back of increased acreage under wheat cultivation and enhanced irrigational facilities.
· Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmad said that the country cultivated wheat in 20,000 hectares of lowland and used the irrigation
facilities to mop up a record production of wheat.
Ethiopia managed to get a bumper wheat crop this year riding on the back of increased acreage under wheat cultivation and enhanced
irrigational facilities. Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmad said that the country cultivated wheat in 20,000 hectares of lowland and used the irrigation facilities to mop up a record production of wheat.
Mentioning that the strides being made by the country in the food front, the prime minister hoped that would take the country to address
the food shortage and achieve food security. While addressing Parliament Abiy said that waters from Awash and Omo rivers, among
others, are being used for irrigation. Wheat production in the country was mainly limited to farmers owning small holdings and was following rain fed agriculture, which kept their produce to lower levels.
Mentioning that Ethiopia’s population is surging ahead of 110 million, Abiy said that food production has to increase to feed the increasing number of people. Ethiopia spends over half a billion dollar for importing wheat, which is huge drain on the foreign xchange. He hoped that with increased focus on wheat production in low k lands and tapping irrigational sources, the country will be able to achieve self-sufficiency in wheat production, saving the huge import bill.
The prime minister said that the country has imported 10.5 million quintals of fertilizers and distributed them to the farmers for the
next farming season. Ethiopia’s fertilizer demand is estimated around 14.6 million quintals. To meet the gap, the government is importing 1.9 million quintals of fertilizer from Djibouti, which would arrive soon. The remaining 2 million quintals are being sourced from the same country.
The government, the prime minister underscored, is giving a lot of importance to distributing high yielding seeds to farmers. The government has already imported 745,000 quintals of seeds. That, he said, was not enough. The government, he said, is using commercial
lands for cultivating high yielding seeds.
