Demonstration and promotion of improved food barley, bread wheat and faba bean technologies

Abstract

Over the past two to three decades, on-farm trials and demonstration and popularization of improved crop production technologies have been undertaken in several potential areas to promote improved crop technologies and enhance their adoption. However, adoption of these improved crop varieties was very low. The main reason for the low adoption is that agriculture and rural development in Ethiopia, although claiming to include the participation of farmers, has remained delivery oriented in terms of its extension services rather than encouraging farmers’ to innovate (Asfaw et al., 2010). As a result, the adoption rates of many of the technologies generated so far has not been impressive. Cognizant of this fact, Gondar Agricultural Research Center (GARC) has carried out many participatory research and promotion activities with the general objective of improving the livelihood of the watershed community through introducing improved crop production technologies. The specific objectives of the activities were to demonstrate and evaluate crop technologies in target areas, increase farmers’ productivity by introducing and adopting improved crop varieties; andenhance farmers’ and development agents’ technical capacity in crop production and management.