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Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification

Author: Zach Stewart

Feed the Future Innovation Lab’s Alliance Primed to Drive Sustainable Intensification in Ethiopia

Posted on by Zach Stewart
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An Ethiopian farmer shows researchers how the rope and washer water-lifting technology works on his farm

The 24 innovation labs gathered under the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative are strongly expected to collaborate and bring synergies to address the problems caused by climate change with the aim of increasing food production for a growing population in the countries where they work.

Ethiopia is one of the Feed the Future focus countries with nine active labs (see this fact sheet). The Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab (SIIL) is one of these nine labs working in the country, through a sub-grantee, the Texas A&M Universityand its director Neville Clarke.

Clarke is also leading the Innovation Lab on Small Scale Irrigation (ILSSI), which has been active in Ethiopia for over two years. ILSSI and SIIL are collaborating in Ethiopia through a grant from SIIL known as ‘Sustainably intensified production systems impact on nutrition’ (SIPS-IN). This grant complements the ILSSI and involves the same partners as well as Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia.

Continue reading “Feed the Future Innovation Lab’s Alliance Primed to Drive Sustainable Intensification in Ethiopia” →

Learning How to Mechanize Agriculture in Northwestern Ethiopia

Posted on by Zach Stewart

DSC_0004How many simple technologies have been introduced to rural farming communities, only to fail miserably shortly after the nongovernmental organization (NGO) closes the project? Too many. The technologies were too complicated. Nobody was trained to use them. Materials could not be sourced locally and importation was prohibitively expensive. The list is long.

Speaking to Robert Burdick of Tillers International on the edge of a two-day workshop organized by the Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia on June 8-9, 2016, he outlined some of the factors which contribute to the success of mechanization interventions and why he is confident of the consortium’s success in the northwestern Amhara region. Burdick points out how past Tiller interventions have succeeded in reducing drudgery, increasing the incomes of small farmers and helping establish local service providers. Continue reading “Learning How to Mechanize Agriculture in Northwestern Ethiopia” →

Opportunities Abound for Mechanized Agriculture in Northwestern Ethiopia

Posted on by Zach Stewart

DSC_0020The sustainable intensification of agriculture offers smallholder farmers huge opportunities in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, according to the participants of a workshop on appropriate scale mechanization at Bahir Dar University on the June 8-9, 2016. The introduction of locally-adapted technologies has the potential to raise incomes and nutritional security, reduce drudgery and empower women and youth, offering the people of the region sustainable alternatives to migration to larger urban areas of the country, principally Addis Ababa.

The event was organized by the Appropriate Scale Mechanization Consortium, a $4.7 million four-year project, which is part of the Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab (SIIL), an initiative of Feed the Future led by the United States Agency for International Development. The consortium component of SIIL, which began in September 2015, seeks to leverage the use of mechanization to improve farm productivity, income and nutrition of smallholder farmers, particularly women, in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

Opening the event, Baylie Damtie, the president of Bahir Dar University, underlined the importance of agriculture in the sustainable development of Ethiopia, the key to the industrialization of the country. He also emphasized, however, that this process needed to be introduced at a pace suitable to the needs of the country. Job creation is key, he said.

Continue reading “Opportunities Abound for Mechanized Agriculture in Northwestern Ethiopia” →