Agriculture In Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the least developed countries in the world with poverty stricken economy. Agriculture is the major economic sector and the main source of livelihood for the majority of the people and it is the most important sector for sustaining growth and reducing poverty in Ethiopia. It accounts for 80% of employment, 90% of foreign exchange earnings and 38.8% of Gross Domestic Product (NBE, 2014/15). Consequently, Ethiopia stood third in the world and first in Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of the share of GDP that stems from agriculture (Jema, 2008). Hence, the overall performance of the Ethiopian economy is highly influenced by the performance of the agricultural sector. All in all, enhancing agricultural productivity and commercialization

As a general proposition, given technologies and managerial skills are the same, farmers who have identical access to similar factors, both in quantity and quality, will produce identical outputs of a given crop. That is, their productivity will be identical. However, men and women rural households especially in developing countries have different access to technologies, factors of production and support services. If they use different technologies or different quantities of these factors or there are differences in the quality of these factors, their productivity will differ (Saito et al., 1994). Overcoming agricultural stagnation and food insecurity mainly depends on increasing agricultural productivity. In Ethiopia, like in many other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where subsistence agriculture predominates, placing strong emphasis on increasing the productivity of labour, land, capital and other resources is of paramount importance. Therefore, this study is initiated in view of understanding the agricultural productivity difference between men and women farmers in Yubdo district of west Wollega zone of Oromiya Regional

Studies have persistently identified a gender gap in agricultural productivity of 20 to 30 percentage points in disadvantage of women as an important barrier for the development of the agricultural sector. A number of these studies indicate that once differences in access to productive resources and individual characteristics are taken into account, estimates of the gender productivity gap become insignificant. Henceforth, the evidence speaks of a difference in productivity that arises mainly from differential access to resources and differential farmers’ characteristics by gender. (Kilic, T.,