Biodiversity

Mainstreaming Agro-Biodiversity into the Farming System in Ethiopia
by IBC ~ July 18th, 2011. Filed under: Conservation.
A workshop on Mainstreaming Agro–Biodiversity into the Farming System in Ethiopia was held from June 27-28, 2011 in Adma, Executive Hotel, in the presence of His Excellency Mr. Mohammed Abdush, chairman of the Standing Committee for Agricultural affairs of the House of Representatives of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and other Parliamentarians.


Mainstreaming Agro-Biodiversity... Workshop, Adama/Nazret

The main objectives of the inception workshop were:

•Understand the project and take ownership
•Develop a participative approach that includes the views and ideas of key stakeholders of the project.
According to National Project Coordinator, the project is expected to provide farming communities with incentives (policies, capacity, markets and knowledge) to mainstream conservation of agro-biodiversity, including crop wild relatives into the farming systems of Ethiopia.
The goal of the project is to develop and approve comprehensive agro-biodiversity friendly policies to promote agro- biodiversity friendly production practices; Extension service provide farmers with knowledge based extension technology to promote farmer varieties; Put in place effective M&E system for assessing conservation status of agro-biodiversity at the community level; Increased supply of agro-biodiversity products through improved efficiency of production and special marketing channels; enhanced international and national demand for the four agro-biodiversity friendly products; secure incomes from trading agro-biodiversity friendly product; established four in-situ gene banks and on farm conservation sites, put in place institutional and operational capacities to manage the four in-situ gene banks and on farm conservation sites.

Participants of the workshop included Project Steering Committee Members, Federal, Zonal and Worda government officials, representatives of NGOs, CBOs, Universities, staff of the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation and the UNDP. Altogether about 70 participants attended the workshop.