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Yaw's avatar

Agreed Kenyan agriculture is still terrible. Ethiopia is what people should be observing.

Ethiopia's yields are double Kenya's

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG?locations=KE-ET

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

I wonder how Ethiopia has gotten such high ag yields? Their fertilizer use is much less: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.CON.FERT.ZS?locations=KE-ET

One issue Kenya has is that maize price is fixed by the govt and wheat has 0% import duty (supported by the millers) which kills any wheat growing that might be possible.

How did Ethiopia get such good yield growth since 2010?

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Yaw's avatar

Shameless plug-in for my article on Ethiopia

https://yawboadu.substack.com/p/ethiopias-economy-in-the-modern-day

What they did was:

1. Ended collectivization and central planning of agriculture and allowed farmers to set their own prices in a household or cooperative

2. More mechanization/irrigation systems

3. In 2008, they made the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange(ECX). They have a trading floor and farmers trade spot contracts in coffee, sesame, maize and wheat instead of relying on traditional marketplaces, farming trade associations or government commodity procurement systems that many African countries still use.

The ECX provides warehouse delivery centers, transparent prices, large scale of volume for transactions, reduces middlemen who take portions of a farmers’ income, efficiency, speed, and risk management with futures and options contracts.

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

Thanks! So it seems the ECX is the most correlated change to increases in productivity. Because Kenya also doesn't have collectivization and (I believe) has more or less the same mechanization/irrigation than Ethiopia.

Feels like ECX is worth looking into more. Do you know of any good resources? Or people building this in East Africa?

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Md Nadim Ahmed's avatar

Yeah. I'm assuming they have similar ish climatic conditions.

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Oliver Kim's avatar

Kenyan agriculture has not been overall a great success story (despite the country’s favorable climate) but horticulture is a noted sector with export success: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/industries-without-smokestacks-in-africa-a-kenya-case-study/

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Md Nadim Ahmed's avatar

It might not be good. It might just suck less compared to the rest of Kenya's industries.

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Carpenter Morrison's avatar

Also Kenya and Ethiopia have coffee growing regions, the Nile in the case of Ethiopia. Niger, Mali etc have very tough growing conditions, no?

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