Although soil and agronomy data collection in Ethiopia has begun over 60 years ago, the data are hardly accessible as they are scattered across different organizations, mostly held in the hands of individuals (Ashenafi et al.,2020; Tamene et al.,2022), which makes them vulnerable to permanent loss. Cognizant of the problem, the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) for data sharing and access was created in 2018 with joint support and coordination of the Alliance Bioversity-CIAT and GIZ (https://www.ethioagridata.com/index.html).
Mobilizing its members, the CoW has embarked on data rescue operations including data ecosystem mapping, collation, and curation of the legacy data, which was put into the central data repository for its members and the wider data user’s community according to the guideline developed based on the FAIR data principles and approved by the CoW. So far, CoW managed to collate and rescue about 20,000 legacy soil profile data and over 38,000 crop responses to fertilizer data (Tamene et al.,2022). The crop response dataset (N=1,550 observations) is extracted, transformed, and uploaded into a harmonized template, consisting of 76 variables.
Recent efforts by the Federal and Regional research centres in collaboration with the MoA, RBoA’s and ATA have shown that there was a significant potassium deficiency in significant agricultural lands of the country. Potassium deficiency was observed through soil fertility assessment surveys and crop response studies.Hence, the promotion of potassium fertilizer use in the agricultural system would be of great importance to increase the balanced fertilizer use system in the country.
In the year 2016/ 2017, a project known as “Large Scale Popularization of Potassium Fertilizer Use in Ethiopia” was implemented from October 2015 to March 2017 by Sasakawa Africa Association/Sasakawa Global 2000 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, ATA, AGRA and other stakeholders. To achieve the set goals and objectives of the project, in the 2016/2017 cropping season, 18,203 KCL demonstrations were implemented in the four project regions, Amhara, Oromia, SNNPRs and Tigray on five crops, Teff, wheat, Maize, Barley and Sesame. Accordingly, voluminous crop response to the fertilizer dataset was generated by this project.
Reference:
Ashenafi, A., Tamene, L., and Erkossa, T. 2020. Identifying, Cataloguing, and Mapping Soil and Agronomic Data in Ethiopia. CIAT Publication No. 506. International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 42 p. 10.13140/RG.2.2.31759.41123.
Tamene L; Erkossa T; Tafesse T; Abera W; Schultz S. 2021. A coalition of the Willing - Powering data-driven solutions for Ethiopian Agriculture. CIAT Publication No. 518. International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 34 p. https://www.ethioagridata.com/Resources/Powering%20Data-Driven%20Solutions%20for%20Ethiopian%20Agriculture.pdf.
The Coalition of the Willing (CoW) website: https://www.ethioagridata.com/index.html.
TERMS:
Access to the data is limited to the CoW members until the national soil and agronomy data-sharing directive of MoA is registered by the Ministry of Justice and released for implementation.
DISCLAIMER:
The dataset populated in the harmonized template consisting of 76 variables is extracted, transformed, and uploaded from the source document by the CoW. Hence, if any irregularities are observed, the data users have referred to the source document uploaded along with the dataset. Use of the dataset and any consequences arising from using it is the user’s sole responsibility.
