Establishment and strengthening of MAAs

MAAs is voluntary platforms composed of different market actors and stakeholders with the main purpose of facilitating agribusiness linkages between organized farmers, other marketing chains and service providers. 49 establishment & strengthening and live to contribute for envisioned linkages.

Input Market Linkage Created

Even though, still input shortage is observed varying from schemes to schemes, different input market linkages has been carried out through IM cooperatives and multipurpose cooperatives from unions, certified Agro dealers, ATA farm service centers and Research Institutes. From this linkage 3890 HH (216F) are able to purchase 36 Qt Vegetable seeds, 4089 HH (657) 9977.63 qt Fertilizer and 4459(521 f)HH 1217.5qt of Cereals seed.

Output Market Linkage

There are opportunities to have different market outlets in order to sell smallholder farmers produces collectively in better price. There are traders, consumer cooperatives & unions, institutions, hotels, factories, and so on which demand horticultural commodities which are produced by irrigation user farmers. So, identification of potential market carried out by cooperatives & MAAs and linkage facilitation has been done to benefit small holder farmers from these output market linkages.

Farm gate Storage facility- As it is known, huge amount of production loss resulted from lack of farm gate storage and occurred at a time of transporting products from farms to markets. So, to overcome or minimize this loss, the program supplied list cost farm gate storage facilities with some basic equipment last year and will be continue this year.

At the end of 2012 e.c, 129,050 quintals of different products are sold and 5,839(1,082 female) farmers are earned more than 191 million birr.

Financial linkage and Credit Facilitations

• Identification of financial Institutions & assessing lending requirements
• Conducting different trainings & Forums to create awareness on activity pillar topics
• Scheme based plan preparations
• Identification of woredas common to RUFIP
• More than 6.3 million birr is saved on accounts of RUSSAccos and MFIs, 4035 HH (1216 females) are engaged in saving. More than 8.38 million birr outstanding loan provision is carried out and 4005(1191F) HH are benefited.

Technical support & follow-up on the ground

It is obvious that, there are challenges and gaps hindering the shift along the value chain. So, follow up and continuous supervision helped to search areas of gap and assist technically automatically on the ground.

Partnership

PASIDP had an agreement with TNS for 2 years pilot technical support intervention of 14 schemes, 12 woredas and 6 zones across 4 intervention regions. Business plan template development, preparation of training modules, Crop selection tool development, and assessment of input suppliers, potential markets and buyers, Identification of financial partners and preparation of loan application are some of achievements of TNS.