Eighty-five percent of Ethiopians live in rural areas and deriving their livelihoods from agriculture.
Since the Ethiopian people revolutionary government was come into power in 1991, after toppling the military regime, Ethiopia has achieved substantial poverty reduction, mostly through the deliberate move in the country side. The government initiates a number of programmes. Among others Farmers training center program is the concern of this paper.According to the history of the programme, at the lower administrative unit /having 2000 population/ the ministry of agriculture and rural development established farmers training center system by assigning 4 diploma level Development agents in crop production, animal husbandry, natural resources protection, animal health and cooperative, one from each. Guidelines are being prepared for the operation of these FTCs, and a number of tasks have been identified.
Agricultural training, Extension services, Provision of information and Permanent centre for exhibitions are the tasks handled by each farmers training centers. In the training sub section, within each module, there are different courses and for each course there will be curriculum guidelines (to be developed by the Federal extension services in English and be translated by each Region into local languages). Upon graduation, the farmer is expected to be a role model for other farmers and be market oriented and environmentally conscious.He/she is also keeping records.
The extension methodology is planned to be participatory in nature and based on the identification of farmer’s problems and potentials using Participatory Rapid Assessment (PRA) methods. Emphasis will be on market oriented commodities, taking into consideration differences in agro-ecological potentials and individual farmers’ resource base (household types). In their some other time the extension workers advised/consult the all farmers in their respective field.
