Yield Gaps, Varietal Adoption, and Seed Commercial Behaviour: Barley Seed System Landscape in the Highlands of Ethiopia

Abstract

Barley is among the major food security crops in the highlands and industrial commodity for the emerging brewery industry. This paper documents the current productivity levels, varietal adoption and seed commercial behaviors based on primary data collected from randomly selected 549 barley growers. The result indicates that the national average yield (1.5 t/ha) is by 61% and 29% lower than the yield achieved at research stations and farmers’ fields with improved variety and recommended practices, respectively. For food barley, 23.3% (2.6% are women) were full-adopters of improved varieties and 9.5% (less than 1% women) were partial adopters while all malt barley growers were adopters. Among the adopters, only 8.3% of food barley and 38.5 % of malt barley growers purchased certified seed. This is also associated with the huge gap of supply of demanded seed, where only 9% of revealed barley seed demand was supplied (4% for food and 17% for malt barley) during the survey year.