Periodic drought, soil deterioration brought on by overgrazing, deforestation, high taxation, and insufficient infrastructure are all problems in Ethiopia’s agriculture (making it difficult and expensive to get goods to market). However, the greatest promising resource in the nation is in agriculture. Grain self-sufficiency and the growth of exports of cattle, grains, vegetables, and fruits are also possibilities. Annually, up to 4.6 million people require food assistance. Agriculture is a key component of many other economic activities, such as marketing, processing, and exporting agricultural goods. The majority of production is of a subsistence type, while the small agricultural cash-crop sector accounts for a sizable portion of commodity exports. Coffee, pulses (like beans), oilseeds, grains, potatoes, sugarcane, and vegetables are some of the main crops. The majority of agricultural products exported are commodities, and coffee is the top foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is also the continent’s second-largest producer of corn. Ethiopia has historically been a rare exception in Sub-Saharan Africa due to its unique natural conditions, which allowed Ethiopian farmers to boost their production by adopting tools like ploughs, for example. The favorable environment in Ethiopia’s Highlands also made irrigation and other cutting-edge agricultural equipment possible. The government calculated in the late 1980s that of Ethiopia’s total land area of 1,221,480 square kilometers, 15% was under agriculture and 51% was pasture. Additionally, agriculture was thought to make up more than 60% of the cultivated area. According to the government, forests made up 4% of the nation’s total land area, with the majority of them located in the southwest. These numbers were different from those given by the World Bank, which predicted that in 1987, farmland, pastureland, and forestland made up, respectively, 13%, 41%, and 25% of the total land area. Large tracts of potentially productive land could not be used due to accessibility issues, water restrictions, and infestations of disease-carrying insects, primarily mosquitoes. For instance, malaria prevented farmers from settling in several sections of Ethiopia’s lowlands.
