A three-day joint field visit with team members from the Ethiopian Horticulture Producer Exporters Association (EHPEA) and GIZ has been undertaken to fruits and vegetable farms in southern parts of Ethiopia to have first-hand information while exploring ways and identifying areas for strategic interventions and impactful support to promote sustainable and resilient horticulture in the country.
The mission was undertaken from 15-17 June with the focus on learning their existing horticultural practices, measures of sustainability and resilience, markets and value chains while identifying bottlenecks that require strategic interventions and support of EHPEA to realize the required development of horticulture with scalability, in the country in general and to smallholder farmers in particular.
Facilitated by the Association with team members including among others, the EHPEA Executive Director Tewodros Zewdie as well as Jean-Bernard Lalanne and Sebsebe Zewde from GIZ-SRVC II (strengthening rural value chain) project, the field visit mission featured discussions with the management teams of the respective farms, primarily on the services and required interventions of EHPEA through which GIZ support is channeled.
In the first leg of the three-day field visit, the group on Monday landed in Lucy and Fri-El Farms in the Omorate cluster, where Lucy, also with a farm in Arba Minch, is engaged in the production of different types of horticultural crops while Fri-El Ethiopia primarily and massively produces high-quality bananas for local and foreign markets.
On the second day on Tuesday, the team paid a visit to Luna Farm in Deramalo Woreda, where the Farm grows variety of vegetables with final stage of the construction of a standard packing house and cold-room facility, to be functional shortly.
The mission was wrapped up Wednesday with a visit to Lucy Farm in Arba Minch, where the Company grows variety of fruits and vegetables, also with a new propagation greenhouses to be fully operational within two months.
The joint visit is an important venue for EHPEA and GIZ to identify areas of interventions that would allow them to further strengthen partnership to support horticultural farms and cooperatives towards sustainable, inclusive and resilient horticulture in Ethiopia, while promoting the country’s global competitiveness.
