Agriculture, nutrition and economics through training: A virtuous cycle in rural Ethiopia

Abstract

The Sustainable Development Goals links together agriculture and education for developing countries towards sustainability. In line with these goals this research has done a “grass-root” experience in a rural area of a sub-Saharan country where a small NPO has been working for more than 20 years. Six villages have been chosen where the NPO already had built wells and child nutritional centres. Regularly, the NPO builds and donates the well for the farmers and starts a training program in both agriculture and nutrition on how to create small farms, cultivate several different vegetables.The main objective of this research is twofold; firstly, to identify the farmers’ training preferences. Secondly, to analyze the factors that determine agriculture, accounting or nutrition training courses priorities in small local areas in rural Ethiopia. This research work will follow the exploratory research and “grass-root” case study methodology. The researchers have gone to the NPO´s area with a cooperation project in agriculture, nutrition and accounting training and have surveyed the farmers with quantitative and qualitative surveys. The results will be analysed through multivariant statistics. Farmers’ have described their antecedents, their objectives together with all the projects they are currently managing and their need for training in the three areas: agriculture, nutrition and accounting. Among the factors that determine their priorities were socio-demographic variables, types of crops, farmers´ financial inclusion, current and non-current assets and their use of income. Also, the reasons for the differences among the villages are reviewed.