Project News

In Ethio-SHEP, 3rd year Market Linkage Forum (MLF) was organized in Amhara and Oromia Region. This forum invited the representatives of the SHEP target farmer groups and market stakeholders such as agricultural input suppliers, buyers (traders, wholesalers, retailers, etc.), food processing companies, financial institutions, university, trade office cooperative, unions and so forth. The SHEP target farmers have a chance to obtain technical information from input supplier and/or get a connection to the trader/wholesaler.

The Market Linkage Forum has two purposes: (1) it shows farmers a business opportunity horticultural farming can bring to them, and (2) it helps farmers to establish business linkages with a variety of market actors involved in horticulture business.

In the Forum, the representative farmers shared the experience after the market linkage forum conducted in the last year.
" As a group, we are struggling to access high-quality potato seed in the past. Last year, we attended this forum and we were able to connect seed supplier. After the forum, we discussed with other group members and we purchased seed potato from them. Because of growing high-quality seed, traders start buying at a high price. We also start grading and using larger sucks in order to maintain our relationship between wholesalers. Therefore, we were able to benefit a lot through this forum".
One supplier said,
"The forum helped us to promote our products and services and exchange contact address and information with stakeholders particularly with farmers. I am very happy because the forum improved my understanding that there is big demand for vegetable inputs, also I learnt from farmers that some of the seeds that we provide may not perform as we expect, also we realized the type of package farmers prefer for seeds."

Explanation by the food processing company in Arsi Zone, Oromia Region

Sharing information with input suppliers and farmers in Amhara region Sharing information with input suppliers and farmers in Amhara region

Discussion with farmers and Traders in Amhara region

Farmers sharing their experience