28th May 2012

To: LIVES HQ

Subbject: Report on commodity review and district selection consultative team meeting

For Sidama Zone

A tem of 6 members chaired by Ato Aklilu Adula, Sidama zone Vice administrate and Zone Agricultural Office head held a meeting on 28th of May 2012 from 9.30AM to 1.30 PA. The team was composed of;

1. Ato Aklilu Adula- Vise Admin and Head of zone office of agriculture

2. Ato mesfin care- Zone office of Agriculture vice head

3. Ato Burka Bulasho-Zone marketing and cooperative office head

4. Ato Birhanu Abitew-Zone livestock work process owner

5. Ato berket Asefa-Natural resource protection process owner

6. Ato Negash Arega –Crop expert.

7. The regional PIP team

The discussion started with a short presentation on LIVES geneses, implementation strategy, work plan development approach, etc. and major tasks to be accomplished by the consultative team. All the members appreciated the start of LIVES in Sidamo zone indicating that IPMS in Dale district contributed significantly to the government development efforts and the coming of LIVES is additional asset to our zone. The team members raised number of issues focusing on commodity number and type, coverage, budget, districts selection criteria, etc,.

Some of the important questions and or comments included;

1. Why only four commodities

2. Why didn’t you indicate target beneficiaries’

3. Honey production can be linked with coffee flower but you did not consider coffee as a commodity

4. Sidama needs new crop verities introduction such as soybeans in some highly potential areas of the zone

5. The project seems to be somehow the continuation of IPMS and thus is it compulsory to include Dale as one of the three districts

1 6. Why should we focus on adjacent districts?

7. Is your implementation strategy focuses on individuals or cooperatives?

8. Can we change or shift the commodities indicted

9. How is your staff arrangement? Are you going to place your staff at district level as you did in IPMS or not

10. Do you have plan to upgrade FTC or not

11. Why did not you indicate your budget at different levels and others.

The PIP members reacted on some of the important issues indicating that:

. The number of commodities for each district or zone is limited to four in order to be more effective and efficient in addressing constraints around an identified commodity and to come up with concrete impact

. Irrigated crops are not included because so far no irrigated crops (cereal, pulses) are handled by smallholder farmers for market purposes

. LIVES project appreciates and implements bottom-up planning approach and thus once you select the target districts the team will move to districts and again select PAs most potential for the LIVES project with the district technical staff. Finally target beneficiaries’ will be registered based on each HH engagement in producion of the identified commodities in this year or last year and that will be our target beneficiaries

. We know that honey from coffee flower could be highly marketable commodity but is that potential already existing or are we going to develop from zero. If the aim is to start from zero it may not fit LIVES objects and we may not look at it.

. Dale district could be one of the three cluster districts and LIVES appreciates if that could happen because knowledge and skill developed through IPMS in Dale could be an enormous input to LIVES. For instance skilled farmers in Dale could be a resource person in the adjust new woreda and so on. However, if you have more logical ground to drop Dale we do not push to much.

. By any means districts should be adjacent and this has a wide range of advantage in inputs supply, products marketing, service provision, etc. For instance if we have large number of farmers engaged in poultry production or milk production, input like feed supply will easily be picked up by private traders because high volume of inputs supply will be important to traders

. The LIVES implementation strategy does not focus on any specific stakeholder but all role players (Public and Private) along the identified value chain will be our focus and LIVES will deal with them all in all directions till the ultimate objective is met. However, since LIVES deals mainly on market linkage, marketing and cooperative office, OoA, research and other will be our strongest partners

. You have full privilege to drop or pick a commodity with in Livestock and irrigated fruits and vegetables provided the it is more feasible

. Unlike IPMS, LIVES is not going to locate any staff at district level. However, at all levels there will be a focal person who will be facilitated by LIVES to carry on the LIVES related activities. LIVES will have its staff at zone at regional and federal level.

. FTC is not focus of LIVES for number of reasons such as less utilization of FTCs upgraded by IPMS and also donors may have some other reasons not to invest on FTC.

The discussion continued on commodities proposed by the region for Sidama zone and many agreed to drop honey and honey wax and pick small ruminants. Thus, commodities proposed by the zone consultative team include:

1. Chicken

2. Milk

3. Small ruminants

4. Fruits and vegetables

After further discussion three options of cluster districts were proposed for ranking

1. Dale-Aleta wondo-Aleta chuko cluster

2. Arbegona-Bansa-Bona Cluster

3. Shebedino-Boricha-Loke Abaya cluster

Significant time was spent on pushing and pulling of the suggested districts as LIVES cluster districts. Finally ranking was conducted for the 9 districts and the result is shown in the following table

3 Table 2. District commodity ranking matrix

Zone: Sidama

S/ Region/Zon Beaf/live Chicken Mil Honey & SR Fruits and Total N e animals egg/meat k bee wax meat/live vegetables animals 1 1 Arbegona 1 1 1 4 2 1 Bansa 1 1 1 4 3 1 Bona 1 1 1 4 4 1 Shebedno 1 0 1 3 5 0 Borcha 1 1 0 2 6 0 Lock Abaya 1 1 0 2 7 1 Dale 1 0 1 3 8 1 Aleta wondo 0 0 1 2 9 1 Aleta Chuko 1 0 1 2 Overall three districts:

1. Arbegons

2. Bansa

3. Bona were selected as LIVES cluster districts. Dale cluster was dropped reasoning out that the Dale cluster has been under number of interventions including IPMS and opportunity should be shifted to other cluster districts with high potential. Ranking result also did not fever Dale-Aleta wondo-Aleta chuko cluster.

Finally all of the participants appreciated the coming of LIVES and expressed their commitment to contribute what is expected of them for the success of LIVES project.

PIP team will be moving to Arbegona on 29th of May 2012 afternoon after completing some protocol work in the morning.

Thanks

SNNPRS PIP team

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