Analysis of Production, Yield and Cultivation Area Trends in Major Cereal Crops in Ethiopia

Cereals are important crops for achieving food security in Ethiopia. Maize, sorghum and millet are major cereal grown by smallholder farmers of the country for consumption. Fifteen (15) years data of total production, yield and cultivated area of these cereal crops in Ethiopia were assessed from http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/ to understand the trends of production, yield and cultivated area of maize, sorghum and millet through time and analyze the contribution of increasing yield and cultivated area for total production at the country level. The result revealed that total production in 1993-2019 was increased by 560%, 736% and 732% in maize, sorghum and millet respectively whereas cultivated area for these crops in the same period was increased by 170%, 304% and 159%. Yield of maize, sorghum and millet in 2019 years was 147%, 107% and 222% respectively more compared to the yield of the respective crops in the base year. In maize and sorghum, a unit increase of yield was associated with 3 million tons of production, and in millet a unit increase in yield was associated to nearly 5.5 million tones production. In conclusion, both yield increase and cultivation area expansion contributed to production increase but strong relation was observed between yield and total production in maize, sorghum and millet in Ethiopia.