Ethiopia – Information Systems for Agricultural Risk Management

Information is key in agricultural risk management. It is required to facilitate farmers’ production and marketing decisions and to manage the corresponding risks. As part of efforts to assist developing countries in integrating risk management strategies into policy agenda, IFAD/PARM developed 8-series policy brief on Information Systems for Agricultural Risk Management (IS-ARM).

This policy brief presents key highlights for the context of Ethiopia, with recommendations for further action. It indicates that information systems in Ethiopia are comprehensive and elaborative for analyzing and managing agricultural sector risk relating to commodity production and marketing, satellite and meteorology. However, the existing data is not aggregated, hardly updated and narrowly communicated to the benefit of remote stakeholders like smallholder farmers.