Introduction

Since Ethiopia's tragic drought and famine-prone decades of the 1970s and 1980s, researchers and policymakers have been particularly concerned with finding long-term, sustainable solutions to Ethiopia's food security needs. The majority of extension, development, and research on Ethiopian agriculture has focused upon the cereal-based systems of the highlands of northern, central, and eastern Ethiopia, and to a lesser extent upon the shifting cultivation economies of subtropical and lowland western Ethiopia. There has been considerably less research on Ethiopia's other major agricultural complex, the enset agricultural system of the highlands of southern Ethiopia.

Enset (Ensete ventricosum) is the main crop of a sustainable indigenous African system that ensures food security in a country that is food deficient. Enset is related to and resembles the banana plant (Plate 1) and is produced primarily for the large quantity of carbohydrate-rich food found in a false stem (pseudostem) and an underground bulb (corm). More than 20 percent of Ethiopia's population (more than 10 million people -- the precise number of enset users is unknown), concentrated in the highlands of southern Ethiopia (Figure 1.1), depend upon enset for human food, fiber, animal forage, construction materials, and medicines.

Figure 1. General Area of Enset Cultivation
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Enset agriculture has received surprisingly little extension, development, or research attention, perhaps because: 1) the majority of enset farmers live in one of the least developed regions of Ethiopia, making access and logistics difficult; 2) the system is unique when compared to cereal farming; 3) production processes are complex; and 4) there is the perception that it is eminently successful, sustainable, and trouble-free.

Since the 1950s Ethiopian and international scientists have carried out enset research, but much of this work was undertaken by isolated researchers and was often focused by discipline on specific topics and poorly funded. In the early 1990s multidisciplinary, multinational teams of agronomists and social scientists conducted pilot studies and held discussions with several Ethiopian institutions and individuals in order to determine: 1) whether a more detailed understanding of enset agriculture could contribute to Ethiopia's present and future food security needs, and, if so, how; 2) what the current status of enset extension and research was; and 3) the potential for collaborative investigations.

The general conclusion was that an integrated and comprehensive study of the biological, agricultural, ecological, social, and economic components that make up enset-based agricultural systems was greatly needed if Ethiopia was to: 1) increase production and distribution of enset products, not only within rural southern Ethiopia, but for urban markets; 2) transfer enset-based agricultural systems, or parts thereof, to other, non-enset growing regions of highland Ethiopia; and 3) determine if the sustainability of enset agriculture was under threat in the short or long term.

In order to initiate the development of such integrated and comprehensive multidisciplinary projects, the International Workshop on Enset was held in December 1993 in Addis Ababa, under the auspices of the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and the University of Florida. With over 60 participants and 32 papers presented, the purpose of the workshop was to: 1) bring together for the first time Ethiopian and other researchers from international, national, and nongovernmental organizations involved or interested in enset agriculture; 2) determine the current state of knowledge on enset; 3) increase the Ethiopian and international public's awareness of the importance of enset-based agriculture in Ethiopia; 4) identify future avenues of enset investigation; and 5) devise a long-term, interdisciplinary plan for extension, development, and research on enset-based farming systems (Abate et al, 1996).

Current research efforts in Ethiopia are largely relegated to the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional Government (SNNPRG), where the Awassa Research Center and Areka Research Station are conducting various enset studies with a team of eight to ten scientists. Several researchers at Awassa College of Agriculture and Addis Ababa University also have enset-related projects. However, no specific technical packages are currently being promoted to farmers. In 1995 the Enset Needs Assessment Project was initiated as a direct outgrowth of the International Workshop. Funded by Deutche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zummenarbeit (GTZ), Germany, and coordinated by the SNNPRG Bureau of Agriculture in collaboration with Ethiopian and foreign institutions, the goal of the project is to provide baseline data for extension, development, research, and policy agendas for national and international institutes, individual researchers, national policymakers, and donor agencies. The first phase, comprising a literature review, rapid rural appraisal, and informal surveys of three major ethnic groups that use enset as a staple or co-staple, has been completed. Phase Two, the design and collection of household, yield, market, and processing questionnaires, and the collection of additional data from other enset-based ethnic groups, is in the process of analysis by many of the authors of this publication.

International donors have in general been reluctant to commit funds for enset research. However, in July 1997 the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture designated enset as a national commodity, which may pave the way for changes in research and extension programs. As these programs are formulated, more complete information on enset systems will be required. It is in this spirit that this booklet has been put together. The objectives here are to: 1) bring together and put into focus what we know and what still needs to be researched in order to document a sustainable system; 2) map out future research agendas for national and international scholars; and 3) provide information to government policymakers and donors for potential interventions to assist enset producers. This publication has been prepared in the form of questions and answers, to provide an accessible approach to the subject, and to elucidate what we know and what needs to be known for future work and interventions.

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