Chickpea yield in Ethiopia can be doubled by enhancing farmers’ technical knowledge

A study led by researchers from the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has revealed that chickpea yields in Ethiopia could be potentially doubled by enhancing the technical efficiency of its production and technology use. The study, published in Springer Nature’s Food Security journal, was conducted in three regions of Ethiopia – Amhara, Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region (SNNP) – which are among the major chickpea-growing areas in the country. As part of this study led by Dr Shalander Kumar, an agricultural economist at ICRISAT, researchers studied 681 chickpea-growing farm households. Using a meta frontier model (a calculation method applied to estimate technical knowledge of different technologies), they analyzed the technical knowledge of the farmers to attain potential crop production per unit of inputs in the identified regions. Although Ethiopia has witnessed significant improvement in chickpea production ...