Ethiopia: Farmers Make the Shift to Agroecology – But Not Without Support
The intertwined nature of food, livelihoods, health, and natural resource management can no longer be denied. Agroecology – a transdisciplinary field that includes the ecological, socio-cultural, technological, economic, and political dimensions of food systems, from production to consumption – is accordingly growing in popularity. As the transition takes hold, measuring the performance of agroecology systems is more important than ever.
To this end, the Centre for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)’s Measuring Agroecology Performance (MAP) project assessed the performance of agroecology within the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ)’s ProSilience project in four African countries – Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Madagascar. The MAP project forms part of the Metrics domain of the Agroecology Transformative Partnership Platform (Agroecology TPP).
In Ethiopia, the team assessed the agroecological transition levels (AETL) of farms in the Hula, Sodo-Zuria, and Walmara districts – three of the 22 districts in which ProSilience has been operating since 2021. The results, which were presented for validation at an April 29, 2024 workshop in Addis Ababa, showed that farms that are beneficiaries of ProSilience are at more advanced AETLs than those who are not.