With support from the Agricultural Transformation Agency, smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone, Oromia Regional State have started organising themselves into crop-specific clusters to increase productivity.

Dubbed Farmers Production Cluster (FPC), the scheme will enable the farmers with adjacent farmlands to undertake all the processes of farming, starting from ploughing to harvesting, at the same period of time. The farmers will also cultivate the same types of cereals. For the project, the Agency organises volunteer farmers and trains them to practise mechanised farming.

The initiative is part of the larger Agricultural Commercialisation Clusters (ACC) project that was developed and tested over the past two years. ACC was officially launched last November with the presence of President Sahle-Work Zewdie and European ambassadors at a ceremony held at the UN-ECA premises in the capital.

The Agency has allocated 378 million dollars for ACC to include over five million farmers in the programme over the coming five years. It will be implemented in 300 selected weredas grouped into 31 crop clusters. FPC clusters consist of 30 to 60 farmers.

The European Union and its member states largely provided funding for the programme, with major contributions from Denmark with 47 million euros, the Netherlands with 42.5 million euros, and the European Union with 10 million euros. The Agency signed the agreement with the EU, Denmark and the Netherlands for a total of 115 million dollars in assistance for the programme.

So far, the Agency has organised 3.6 million farmers from four regional states under the ACC, of which 1.3 million of them are under FPC. It expects the number to reach 2.5 million under FPC. The initiative has been joined by farmers in Oromia, Amhara, Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples' and Tigray regional states.

Under the programme, the Agency has identified 10 types of cereal crops, fruits and vegetables. So far, it has started the project with teff, wheat, malt barley, maize and sesame. It is now piloting banana, papaya, avocado, tomato and onion, which are planned to be launched in the coming fiscal year.

With the former system named cluster farming, the farmers were only producing for their own consumption, according to Techane Adugna, director of the Agricultural Commercialisation Programme at the Agency, which is providing training on the usage of technicall machinery and creating awareness about the concept of commercialisation.

"The new farming system will enable them to harvest for commercial purposes," he said.

The programme also aims at organising these farmers into a company that processes and adds value to their agricultural products and commercialises them for a better price, according to Techane.