Impact of Agricultural Input and Output Market Development Interventions in Ethiopia

Abstract

Farming is at the core of the economy of Ethiopia. Agricultural market development is expected to allow farming to respond to market signals and develop market orientation and technologies for agricultural production. Input and output market development approach as a tool to enhance technological uptake was employed by Improving Productivity and Market success of Ethiopian Farmers (IPMS) project. This study evaluated the impact of market development in the Bure district. The study took a random sample of 100 participant and 100 non-participant households. The influence of different demographic, social, economic, and access to institutional support service variables on participation were examined. The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) results show that participant households are better-off in net farm income. Productivity measures of households indicate that participants are more productive. Input use of the households is different either from stock or in terms of purchased inputs and participants use. Participants are also more market oriented than non-participant households. Therefore, it is advisable to further extend and scale the approach to a wider coverage area and beneficiary farmers to enhance the uptake of improved agricultural technologies and the link of farmers to the market.

Characteristics of the cattle fattening system and body conformation of beef cattle in Bahir Dar Special Zone, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

“…Cattle fattening has gained prominence as an important business project of the livestock industry in Ethiopia to make use of cheap and plentiful farm by-products. Fattening offers an opportunity to exploit the vast cattle and meat export market in the region as well as Ethiopia's domestic market (Yesigat, 2012). The fattening activity can be undertaken at any level of the livestock ranging from smallholder farmers rearing livestock to multiple functions (Sarma and Ahmed, 2011), and small-scale commercial fattening to largescale commercial fattening (Teklebrhan and Urge, 2013) who export live animals and supply fattened animals directly to abattoirs concocting meat for inland and international markets.…”

Does Fattening Pay for Smallholders?

“…Research forums and policy issues in the area circle on the importance of value addition. Despite this fact, the sector is challenged with weak functional linkage with the input and output market (Habtamu, 2012).…”

“…Market orientation is considered as a lubricant for the wheel of transformation in agriculture to come out from the subsistence farming and widely spread poverty in the country (Habtamu, 2012). Transformation could be realized with the change from subsistence agriculture to market oriented and value addition based production system.…”

“…Dispersed and small scale farmers withhold most of the live animal population in the country and the largest share in the supply to the market. The country should emphasize on the majority small scale producers which may frequently be exposed to the hazards of food insecurity through the creation of functional link of the farming society to the input and output market (Habtamu, 2012). It is always argued that the public should focus on delivering the vital, timely and reliable information, implementing policies and developing infrastructures.…”

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“…Despite these challenges, it can be postulated that farming households in Tigray, who have been granted land use rights, will allocate their land to different uses based on the profitability of each use category [54][55][56][57][58]. This allocation is influenced by the production and sale of their outputs in the existing farm output and input markets, the market prices and demand, and the receipt of input supports and government intervention to mitigate capital constraints and imperfect markets [59][60][61][62].…”