Ethiopia's Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) announced that plans are underway to harvest 2.6 million hectares of land using cluster farming in the coming harvest year, and also implement market-led farming.

Techane Adugna, Director of Agricultural Commercialization Cluster at ATA, said over 1.9 million farmers will benefit from the scheme.

Using cluster farming, Mr. Techane said, the productivity of wheat farming has risen from 30 to 45 quintals per hectare, while that of corn rose from 40 to 60 quintals per hectare.

ATA is halfway into a five-year cluster farming project that aims to benefit four million farmers, the director pointed out.

The agriculture commercialization cluster project also aims to ensure farmers benefit from the whole market linkage, Mr. Techane noted.

In the previous harvest year, 2.2 million hectares of farm have been harvested. The plan for the upcoming harvest year aims to build on that and see the figure rise to 2.6 million hectares.

Source: ENA (Amharic)