The Potential of Food Security Crops in Ethiopia:Review

Abstract

Potential crops are the most important to overcome food insecurity in Ethiopia. This paper also reviews the increasing productivity and production of potential crops through improved technology play great role to achieve food security in Ethiopia. Besides the possible increasing productivity and production of potential or major crops for food security in Ethiopia, through improving productivity of the crop, tackle climate change, tolerance/resistance to major abiotic and biotic factors. In Ethiopia, cereal crops have large coverage both in area and production. Even though out of the total grain crop area, 79.88% is under cereals and their production is contributed 86.68% of the grain production while Pulses covered 13.24% of the grain crop area and their production is 10.38% of the grain production. These potential crops are mainly the primary component in the most Ethiopians’ diet, and also the key to food security in the country. The possible opportunities for increasing major crop production and productivity in Ethiopia are wide suitable land resources, broad crop genetic diversities, availability of different types water resources and conducive government policy. However, challenges also occur in our country like climate change, technological problem, socio-cultural problems, biotic and abiotic factors, lack of skilled manpower, increasing human population growth and they put more people under malnutrition. The major areas of focus on the future major food security crops improvement are improving the productivity of the crop, tackling climate change, capacitating human skill, lowering the total population growth rate through creating awareness on human contraceptive mechanisms, developing tolerance/resistance crops to major abiotic and biotic factors. Keywords: Potential, Production, Food security DOI: 10.7176/JNSR12-2-02 Publication date: January 31 st 2021