Resilient agriculture for inclusive and sustainable Ethiopian food systems: Baseline report 2022

The baseline survey was designed to collect data from three different food systems namely food insecure, high potential and commercial food systems. The report is organized in different sections in line with the outcome areas of the project. It starts with a section on demographic characteristics of households which includes age and family size distribution of households, marital status, education, and primary occupation of household heads and members. The average age of household head is about 47 years and female headed tends to be slightly older (48 years). Regarding marital status of household heads, the majority of household heads (about 70%) in all food systems are married while 10 to 20% of them are widowed. The surveyed households have on average five members. Regarding educational status, most household heads doesn’t read and write. The percentage is very high for female heads (about 68%) compared to male heads that ranges from 26% to 37%. Most farmers produce cereals mainly in the main season Meher with low experiences of agronomic practices which causes low yield. Farmers have very low experience of intercropping, relay cropping, agroforestry and green manuring. A low proportion of farmers are rotating cereals with pulses, which is recommended for soil fertility maintenance. Among all the plots covered during the survey, the majority were planted with local varieties of crops, except maize and wheat which are relatively more planted with improved varieties. The survey also indicates that the application of fertilizers was low. Effective extension and advisory services for supporting farmers by development agents have the potential to improve agricultural productivity, net farm income and food security. The data indicates that the frequency of extension agents contact with farmers for their advice was low in the implementation areas with slight differences among the regions. The proportion of farmers visited with low frequency was, 46% in Oromia, 57% in SNNP/Sidama and 66% in Amhara. The result indicates that a large proportion of farmers are visited by DAs only once in more than a month The baseline survey indicates that decision making of women on production and income generated from different sources was low compared to men. This contributes to low women’s empowerment in agriculture. High workload and less access to finance were the main indicators for contributors of women’s disempowerment in agriculture. Most households rely on own production to satisfy their food requirements. Households in food insecure food systems also rely on purchase to satisfy their food requirement, with small proportions relying on food aid. Moreover, the data indicates that an average household faced food shortage for 3.9 months during a year in food insecure food systems, while an average household in both high potential food system and commercial food system didn’t satisfy their food requirement from their own production for 1.2 months during a year. The data also indicate that food items consumed by household members were less than half as a diverse as required for a healthy diet. Although the dietary diversity varies among food system typologies with statistically significant differences. The survey result indicates that access to finance services was limited in all food systems, especially for women and youth. Informal sources like friends, relatives and informal lenders were more accessible than formal financial services like banks, micro finance and village saving and lending associations. Accessibility to formal sources for female headed households was very limited. In all food systems, female headed households have less access to finance compared to male headed households