Is Value Chain an Important Gap in Agricultural Extension Strategy of Ethiopia? Employers’ Perspectives in Case of SNNPR and Oromia Regions

The emerging trend for agricultural sector in the global market creates opportunities for smallholder farmers in the developing countries to benefit from such opportunities by linking their activities to value chains through vertical and horizontal linkages. Extension workers are poorly trained with the knowledge and skills of value chain to perform their pivotal roles in full since input provision until the consumption. Upgrading the technical and professional skills of development agents with respect to the value chain is very important; and in turn calls for academia mainly universities to come up with custom-made programs that address the specific needs of this vital group of agricultural change drivers. This paper was intended to conduct a comprehensive assessment perspectives whether value chain is the missing component in Ethiopian agricultural extension strategy and as whether there is or not an in turn need from the important employers and stakeholders to the value chain oriented extension packages in Ethiopian agricultural development strategies. From among the regions in Ethiopia, two regions, South nation nationalities and peoples of regional state (SNNPR) and Oromia regional state were selected randomly. Important regional and zonal offices; office of agriculture and natural resource and/or office of livestock and fishery resource were assessed. The result of the study revealed that post-production problems like information/communication gap to plan on their product, lack of value addition and product processing, post-harvest handling and management problem, and market related problems were the main missing areas where extension services are not packaged for; and are the reasons for smallholder farmers behind generating low benefit from the agricultural enterprises. It is finally recommended that upgrading of development agents with the knowledge and skills of value chain oriented agricultural extension services as one of the way of solving the post-production problems of agriculture sectors in Ethiopia. Revisiting the current agricultural extension strategy and then reorient the extension professionals to address the postharvest, value addition and market linkage extension gaps is,therefore, the inevitable way forwards. Thus, it is of paramount significant importance to prepare a full-fledged extension strategy considering the demand of agricultural development in line with the future direction of the agricultural extension services.