Promote the Use of Legume Supply in Ethiopia (PULSE)

Country: Ethiopia
Project details
Services:
Capacity building
Climate-smart agriculture
Nutrition
Value chain development
Crops:
Legumes

Promote the Use of Legume Supply in Ethiopia (PULSE), 2021 - 2024

 

Donor:

Achmea Foundation

Goal 

The overall goal of the project is to improve the resilience and livelihoods of the rural population in Ethiopia by developing sustainable, market-oriented pulse value chains.

What we do

The project will implement a range of activities which support the development of different pulse crop value chains, and which close the gap between smallholder producers and buyers. This activity is complementary to EUCORD’s ongoing BOOST project, which aims to enhance the productivity of farmers and the quality of the resulting malt barley.

Crop rotation of barley with pulses improves the sustainability of the farming system as it reduces pest pressure and helps to improve soil fertility. In addition, the proposed project will also select woredas in lowland ecologies to improve the productivity of specific pulse crops adapted to the lowlands.

The project has three specific objectives:

  1. Improved productivity of pulse crops
  2. Improved farmers' access to inputs and finance
  3. Improved farmers' access to guaranteed markets

The primary target group consists of 6,500 smallholder farmers with a specific focus on women and youth groups who can be organized into cooperatives both for seed and output marketing.

Accomplishments

  • 5,923 farmers have adopted the most impactful practices (MIPs) while 4,005 farmers were trained on GAP (~100% of target) with bean productivity increasing from 2 ton to 2.5 t ha-1.
  • Farmers got access to improved seeds of pulses (six pulse varieties were introduced and popularized). Out of these, two varieties were multiplied on 23 ha and 50 tons harvested. About 31.2 tons were cleaned and made ready for distribution.
  • 1,844 ha were covered by pulses cultivated using the full package of MIPs.
  • The project facilitated access to inorganic fertilizers (111 tons) and bio-fertilizers (89 tons), and USD 388,530 in in-kind pre-financing for the farmers in the project area.
  • Farmers were linked to three buyers and standard commercial parameters were identified for common beans which enables farmers to produce for international market.
  • During the 2022/23 season 25,159 tons of pulses were harvested, 16,615 tons supplied to aggregators (66%) and 8,544 tons consumed by the households or sold on the local market.