Ethiopian Main Cereal, Pulse Harvests Increased 9.5%

22 January, 2009

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopian produced 9.5 percent more cereals and pulses during last year’s main harvest as improved rains, increased fertilizer use and fewer pests boosted output, two United Nations food agencies said.

Production climbed to 17.4 million metric tons in the June to September rainy season, known as the meher, from 15.9 million tons a year earlier, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program said in a joint report on the UN’s Web site.

The harvest follows the failure of the country’s short rainy season from February to March, known as the belg, when output dropped 51 percent to 748,608 tons, leaving at least 12.1 million people in need of emergency food relief.

Total production from smallholdings rose more than 10 percent to 17 million tons in 2008, while output from small commercial farms dropped 15 percent to 351 million tons, the agencies said.

Ethiopia will most probably need 316,728 tons of imported food to feed the country’s 78.1 million people in 2009, according to the report.