Wheat Self-sufficiency: Agricultural Revolution Or Political Assertion?

A land known for strong aridity and pastoralism, the Somali region of eastern Ethiopia is less known for farming, particularly wheat. Being among the marginalized regional states under the previous regime, Somali Regional State also has the largest population that survives on direct food assistance from the central government as well as international humanitarian agencies.

But when all the top leaders of the ruling party, including Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD), arrived in Jigjiga city last week for the party’s executive meeting, they were astounded by the revelation of how the region is rewriting history. Even the presidents of fertile regional states such as Oromia, Amhara, and Southern Ethiopia admitted that they were learning from drought-stricken Somalia, which has transformed into a lush wheat farm with no end in sight.

To add to the odds, Mustafa Omer, president of the region, told guests that the region expects to export two million quintals of wheat from over 700,000 hectares of land currently covered.

Only Abiy was not surprised. He said, “We planned 52 million quintals of wheat during the upcoming Belg harvest season. Harvesting less than this is not only unacceptable, but also makes us squabble,” speaking to his ministers and regional presidents in front of a podium set up in the middle of a wheat farm near Jigjiga city.

Of course, the PM has been preparing for this moment for the past couple of years. At a national level, ultimate targets are given to regional states to produce 100 million quintals of wheat for the Meher harvest and 52 million quintals for the Belg season. This means the total production for this year will be higher than the 107 million quintal annual demand, with the surplus to be exported.

The total production is expected to surge by 40 million quintals from last year.

Abiy has been pushing regional states to utilize the Belg cultivation season, using irrigation and drought-resistant wheat varieties supplied by the African Development Bank (AfDB), among others. Belg is an arid season that brings less rain than the Meher cultivation season. The Agricultural Cluster Commercialization (ACC) is also strictly deployed this time.

The ACC is a concept under which small-holder farmers integrate nearby farming lands to cultivate the same crop at the same time using the same inputs. The system is also suitable for mechanization, which the regional states supply. The PM even insisted farmers drop other crops and consolidate the nearby farmlands into an ACC format. It is considered a replacement for commercial farming, which is at a nascent stage in Ethiopia due to varying bottlenecks.

Almost all regional states are implementing the system currently. Oromia regional state, a region with the highest agricultural potential, currently covers 1.7 million hectares of land with wheat, almost twice that of last year.

Wheat production in the year 2020/21 was 62.3 million quintals in an area of 2.1 million hectares of land on both private and large-scale farms, according to a report from the Ethiopian Statistics Service (ESS). Production during the Meher season takes the lion’s share, recording a production of 53.3 million quintals on 1.7 million hectares of land in the year 2019/20. A year prior, production was 48.3 million quintals in almost the same area of land.

In a bid to bridge the huge gap between supply and demand, Ethiopia has been importing wheat, spending around USD 600 million annually. The import bill has surged since the war between Ukraine and Russia started, where over 30 percent of the world’s wheat supply comes from.

For Demeke Mekonen, deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was also at the meeting in Jigjiga last week, the wheat initiative in Ethiopia is not only about food security, but also about diplomatic leverage.

“Sovereignty for a country partly means making a big departure from being an aid recipient and establishing production of alternative resources locally,” he said, satisfied after visiting the wheat farms.

It is in a campaign like activity by the government that wheat production has been growing since last year. The campaign is also the ruling party’s struggle to prove development is possible amidst an elongated war in the northern part of the country that has spanned 23 months now.

Experts like Adane Tuffa (PhD), an agricultural economist and lecturer at Addis Ababa University, caution about the numbers being announced. Even though he had been observing the growth in various ways, he couldn’t be sure of how big it was to satisfy the demand in a short period of time.

“We cannot be certain about the numbers unless we conduct extensive research,” he said. “It was just last year that we were importing wheat and now there is even talk of exporting it. It is really surprising.”

Adane says a campaign for the production of crops might not be sustainable unless farmers are adequately incentivized. For him, with enough availability of inputs like fertilizers, market information, and product distribution, the farmers would have the initiative themselves to sustain production.

Commercial farming is recommended for mass production of a single commodity, instead of relying on small-scale holders. Experts stressed the government’s need to support commercial farming, which remains nascent. Ethiopia’s land policy and agriculture financing scheme also remain the Achilles heel of the private sector-led agricultural development.

The commodity market system in Ethiopia is also discouraging. Experts also recommend the government absorb the loss of farmers when the market price of the commodity is down. Through government subsidies and premium prices, farmers can be helped to recover at least their production costs while the market price is down. This is particularly critical for farmers to continue cultivating a crop on a yearly basis without worrying about market speculation.

“The government should assure us that it isn’t a one-time result only. Support for the farmers in the form of incentives and creating a conducive environment should be formed for the farmers or youth groups engaged in farming,” Adane said.

At the end of last August, when the crops in the Meher season were harvested, the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute managed 21,300 wheat clusters, excluding Tigray and the highly wheat-producing Bale area of Oromia Regional State, to farm about 431,400 hectares of land by 695,900 farmers. The sowing season in the Bale area arrives in a few months.

Observing last week’s developments in the Somali Regional State, one could be amused by the news of changing a drought-stricken area in the desert into a crop-producing land. But not all feel the same.

Experts like Mengistu Ketema (Prof.), an agriculture economist and lecturer at Haromaya University, who is currently working as chief executive officer of the Ethiopian Economics Association, are not impressed by the initiative, given that crops like sesame would bring higher yields in arid areas than wheat.

He says that the feasibility of harvesting wheat in the lowlands should have been studied well in terms of adaptability and water use efficiency, as crops like sesame would bring long-lasting benefits. For him, even though he is appreciative of converting any land into a productive plot, planting any crop just because the land can produce it can do more harm than good.

“Producing desert-resistant cash crops in the lowlands and enjoying the already established export business could also be the best solution. I don’t think wheat is more beneficial in the lowlands,” he said.

In what seems like an action of putting the cart before the horse, there is a lot of talk about exporting wheat this year.

Mengistu is keen on the export initiative, explaining in theory what could prompt a country to export crops. Among the reasons, he believes that it could be for political gain with no economic viability that Ethiopia is planning to export wheat.

“I don’t think there is a problem with exporting wheat as a short-term plan to ease the foreign currency problem. But in the long term, the feasibility of the export business should be given due consideration as farmers are incurring high costs of inputs like fertilizer,” he said.

With regards to the recently announced agreement between the Kenyan and Ethiopian governments to export wheat to Kenya, Mengistu laid out two scenarios in which it could materialize. The first is the high foreign currency demand in Ethiopia, and the other is the proximity between the two countries that both would prefer in order to avoid transport costs.

The Prime Minister seems very certain about his plan of exporting wheat materializing, giving it a meaning above economic gain.

“We can produce enough for local consumption and export it to others this year. This is not a regular money-making trade activity. It is an initiation to change history,” he said to the executives of his party.

But for Demeke, success in domestic wheat production also means eliminating the aid card that western countries usually use as a pretext to alienate Ethiopia’s sovereignty and integrity. This explains why the government is prioritizing wheat. That is to renovate Ethiopia’s past image from aid recipient to regional and global breadbasket, bit by bit.

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