Barley Organization of Supply and Training II (BOOST II)

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

Barley Organization Of Supply and Training II (BOOST II), 2023-2027

Donor: International Finance Corporation (IFC)

Partners:

  • Soufflet Malt Ethiopia
  • HEINEKEN Breweries Ethiopia
  • Agricultural Transformation Agency
  • 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 21,000MT 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. All the operation areas are where malt barley is not widely grown except in Oromia (Arsi zone), where the previous BOOST project was implemented.

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-CPPs)
  • 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

  • During the last harvest season a total of 1,605 tons of malt barley grain was collected
  • A total of 10,000 farmers (12% female) were onboarded through various interventions including training on GAP, supply of fresh seeds, crop protection and mechanization services
  • A total of 8,500 ha was covered by malt barley using improved practices (2802 ha with fresh seed and 5,698 ha by farmer saved seeds
  • EUCORD’s contract was amended to support additional staff and to include a partnership with Hello Tractor.