Lead farmers approach in disseminating improved tef production technologies

Abstract

The study was designed to assess the performance of an improved and recently released tef variety called Kora. Districts selected for the study were Ada, Minjar-Shenkora and Moretna-Jirru. Primary data were collected using a set of validated  interview schedule and testing the tef variety on field plots of ten lead farmers who were randomly selected from forty-five lead farmers. Data analysis was carried out using frequency counts, minimum, maximum, mean, standard deviation and analysis of  variance. The results of the analysis showed that eight of the lead farmers were very satisfied with the new variety. High grain yield was obtained at the 10 on-farm sites due to the introduction of new variety. While the grain yields ranged from 0.7 and 2.9  tons/ha, the mean yield was 2.2 tons/ha. On average, the total variable costs and total revenues of farms per/ha were Birr 18135.90 and Birr 43414.00, respectively. The cost structure analysis revealed that the two highest production costs were labor (56%) and fertilizer (23%). Hence, labor appears to be the most important limiting factor of production in small-scale tef farming.