Training Conducted on Validation, Demonstration and Scaling up of Crop Technologies

Haramaya University’s Bilateral Ethiopia-Netherlands Effort for Food, Income and Trade (BENEFIT) Partnership-Realizing Sustainable Agricultural Livelihood Security in Ethiopia (BENEFIT-REALISE) Cluster conducted a two-day training on validation, demonstration and scaling up of crop technologies as well as nutrition sensitive agriculture, home gardening, and gender mainstreaming for partners and stakeholders. The training was conducted in Harar City from 10-11June 2019.

The cluster operates in nine PSNP woredas in a total of 36 kebeles of East Hararghe zone and closely works with East Hararghe Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Fedis Agricultural Research Center, and different NGOs operating in the zone. The project has set a target to reach more than 30,000 direct beneficiaries during this phase.

REALISE is a three year program,running from 2018 to 2020, funded by the Government of the Netherlands. The REALISE program aligns with the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) with the aim  to take lessons learned from its sister programs under the BENEFIT portfolio, mainly from CASCAPE and  ISSD Ethiopia, to PSNP target woredas.

According to Dr. Bulti Tesso , the Manager of REALISE Cluster and Lecturer at Haramaya University the goal of the REALISE Program is ‘enhanced human, organizational and institutional capacities to adapt, validate and scale best fit practices to improve the resilience of chronically food insecure households in PSNP woredas’. REALISE’s goal is to be achieved through four primary outcomes: Developed best fit practices that meet expressed needs and have the potential to contribute to increased productivity and resilience; Increased availability, timely delivery and use of quality seed of new, improved, and/or farmer preferred varieties through diverse channels; Enhanced human, organizational and institutional capacities for matching, adapting, validating and scaling best fit practices; and Conducive environment created for the institutionalization of evidence based system innovations.

A total of 45 development agents (DAs) participated in the training from the kebeles and experts from the woredas the program operates.

As part of its capacity building activities, the DAs are expected to cascade the training to the participating farmers with the assistance of REALISE experts through in-site training.