World Grain - February 2015 - 34

FEATURE: ETHIOPIA STRIVING FOR GRAIN SURPLUSES

to vulnerable rural households during
the "lean" months leading up to harvest.
A typical handout is 15 kilograms of
wheat per household member.
Given the high, unmet wheat demand
from millers, a large percentage of this
free wheat is inevitably bought up by
cials and transport companies to divert
shipments, and, more often, the desire
the sale of some of their food basket
usually means a steady illegal supply of
food aid wheat to commercial millers.
In some regions sorghum has been substituted for wheat in the last two years to
Unfortunately, the distortions in the
market caused by food aid along with
the government monopoly on commercial wheat imports has made Ethiopia
a "no-go" zone for international milling groups despite its enormous market
potential. The one exception is Tiger
Brands of South Africa, which in 2011
acquired a 51% interest in the 68-yearold wheat mill of heavily indebted East
Africa Group. The company has a plan
for a large new milling complex at a
wheat, maize, teff and other grains.
TEFF
cereal in Ethiopia as well as in neighboring Eritrea, the only countries where
it is grown in large quantities. The ultrasmall round grain has the largest planted
area of any crop at over 3 million hectares, but yields are the lowest of any cereal at about 1.3 tonnes per hectare. The
harvest averaged 3.8 million tonnes the
last three years.
The ancient grain is preferred for
making the fermented, spongy injera
bread that is the staple of the Ethiopian
diet. The relatively well-to-do urban
population so value this traditional food
that teff has become mostly a cash crop
for farmers who sell their entire output
and buy less expensive cereals for their
own consumption.
The teff value chain mostly ends with
34

urban consumers buying from retail
vendors who use hammer mills to grind
it and other grains. However, increasingly injera bread is made commercially
for sale to busy, well-off households.
As a non-gluten grain, teff has potential demand in many rich countries,
especially those with a large Ethiopian
diaspora, but its export has been banned
for several years in order to keep domestic prices stable.
MAIZE
Introduction of hybrid maize varieties has been a major success story in
Ethiopian agriculture, helping to boost
production to 6.5 million tonnes in the
current crop year on 2 million hectares.
Eight million farmers grow maize, making it the number one cereal crop.
Maize is increasingly cultivated in
moister lowland areas including on
corporate farms with foreign investors
who have taken long-term leases from
the government on large tracts of untilled land. There is no land tenure in
Ethiopia. Government ownership of all
land including farmlands is a vestige of
the communist era.
If current yield trends continue,
Ethiopia has the potential to become an
important exporter of non-GMO white
maize. Only 12% of maize farmers are
using improved seed, but the quasi-governmental Agricultural Transformation
Agency (ATA), supported by large
Gates Foundation grants, has a major
program to increase the access of growers to such seed and provide training in
fertilizer application.

increased from just 140,000 tonnes in
1990 to 800,000 tonnes last year.
BARLEY
Barley, with 1.9 million tonnes of production in 2013-14, ranks fourth among cereals crops. It is grown at higher elevations
than wheat, from 2,300 to 3,000 meters.
Production has expanded much more slowly than the three top cereals. Ethiopians
both consume barley and use it to make a
traditional beer, but its importance in their
overall diet has declined in favor of higher
yielding maize and sorghum.
By 2011, the government had auctioned
off a number of state-owned brewing
enterprises generating $500 million for
state coffers from the likes of Heineken,
Diageo, Castel Group and others.
There are two malting plants that
have undergone expansion to meet the
tripling in consumption of industrially
brewed beer in less than 10 years. In
spite of efforts to introduce improved
varieties of malting barley through
farmers' cooperatives, these plants
still import part of their malting barley. Breweries also buy barley malt in
Europe while waiting for the local malsters to complete capacity additions.
FUTURE
Notwithstanding its longtime reliance
on international food aid, Ethiopia has
already demonstrated its ability to not
only feed its own burgeoning population through increased cereals yields,
but also to generate a large net surplus
in agricultural trade through exports of
livestock and a widening assortment of

SORGHUM AND MILLET
Since 1990, sorghum production has
nearly quadrupled to an average of 4
million tonnes the last few years on 1.7
million hectares. Of Ethiopia's production, a certain share ends up via unofMuch of this may then get re-exported to Eritrea with which Ethiopia has
had no direct trade relationships since
the last war between the two countries
closed borders. Millet production has

agriculture has become the basis of an
growing economy that will continue to
lift millions out of extreme poverty.
David McKee's grain industry consultancy, Key
International LLC, provides market research,
feasibility analysis, technical studies and project
guidance to companies and organizations. He
can be reached at davidmckee59@msn.com.
We want to hear from you - Send comments and
inquiries to worldgrain@sosland.com. For reprints of
WG articles, e-mail reprints@sosland.com.

February 2015 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

http://www.World-Grain.com

World Grain - February 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of World Grain - February 2015