Barley Organization of Supply and Training II (BOOST II)

Country: Ethiopia
Project details
Services:
Capacity building
Market assessment
Crops:
Cereals

Ethiopia: Barley Organization Of Supply and Training Phase II (BOOST II), IFC, USD 850,000, 2023-2027

Partners:

  • Soufflet Malt Ethiopia
  • HEINEKEN Breweries Ethiopia
  • Agricultural Transformation Institute
  • Oromia Seed Enterprise, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research
  • Micro Finance Institutions
  • Oromia Agriculture Research Institute
  • Bureau of Agriculture
  • Oromia Cooperative Promotion Agency
  • Oromia Bureau of Finance and Economic Cooperation
  • Oromia Agriculture and Natural Resource Bureau

Goal 

To increase the local sourcing of commercially available malt barley from smallholder and emergent commercial farmers in Ethiopia.

What we do

The four-year project would facilitate local sourcing of 21,000 MT annual raw malt barley from an estimated 20,020 farmers (20,000 smallholder and 20 commercial farms) by the end of the project. The project will operate in 4 regional States (Oromia, Sidama, Amhara, SNNPR), 8 zones (Arsi, Bale, North Shewa, East Shewa, Guji, Sidama, South Gonder, and Gurage) and in over 30 woredas and 175 kebeles.

A combination of agronomic training, and access to improved inputs will generate a sustainable system to grow malt barley. By project end, average yields of production are estimated to grow from 2 metric tons per hectare to 3.5 metric tons per hectare (for both smallholder and commercial farmers).

The work will have the following subcomponents:

  • Improving farmer’s access to inputs (improved seed varieties and crop protection products)
  • Improved agronomic practice through building the agronomic and technical production capacity of barley producers including digital extension services
  • Improving farmers’ access to mechanization services
  • Piloting irrigation systems and promoting crop rotation with other crops
  • Support in field facilitation and providing information/content review of service providers that contribute to the project

Accomplishments

  • The BOOST-II project currently engages 25,815 malt barley producing farmers across three regions: Oromia, Sidama and Central Ethiopia.
  •  In the current season, the total area allocated to malt barley cultivation by the beneficiary farmers is 10,190 hectares.
  • The project so far supported the supply of 5,375 tons of malt barley.