1. Amhara SBCs Annual Regional Workshop Output December 17, 2015 Addis Abeba

2. North Gondar zone 5 woredas 18 clusters 57 kebeles 3 Annual regional SBCs workshops conducted Major objective create space for information and experience sharing and joint learning among sesame sector stakeholders Introduction

3. Conducted on 28 th of November, 2015 Total 60 participants (of all kinds of stakeholders in the cluster) Main discussion topics were – Rreview of SBC/SBN activities, with emphasis on roll-out of ’20 steps’ – Analyze challenges and opportunities, with emphasis on solutions and actions for 2016. – Discuss sesame sector challenges – Sesame related research activities and results – Farmers financial literacy The workshop

4. Result of the ‘20 step’ roll out – Implemented in 5 woredas, 57 kebeles, 725 MFs, 30 Investor farmers – Capacity building training (training by DAs & MFs) Output of the workshop WoredaTrained farmersTotal MaleFemale Metema4,3193504,669 Quara5,4191,0586,477 Tach Armaciho1,8452372,082 Tegede1,7511341,885 Mirab Armaciho3,0768063,882 Total16,4102,58518,995

5. Field days/experience sharing visit Output… Woreda No of field days ParticipantsTotal MaleFemale Metema>302,1112422,353 Quara>231,0821201,202 Tach Armaciho14810,8062,23013,036 Tegede474,4202094,629 Mirab Armaciho 374,5571,4095,966 Total>23222,9764,21027,186

6. Sesame yield performance per woreda Output… WoredaYield (quintal per hectare) MaxMin Metema112.5 Quara123 Tach Armaciho113.25 Tegede9.51.5 Mirab Armaciho102 Reason for low yield Erratic rainfall (late on-set/rainfall at harvesting time) Not applying all the ‘20 steps’ Disease and pest infestation

7. Sesame research… – Research on productivity and quality improvement underway – Two new sesame varieties on the pipeline – Screening and evaluating local varieties – Research on rotation crops – Soil fertility management Output…

8. Points popped out from the discussion – Sesame marketing – Crop insurance – Machinery in the sesame sector – Rotation crops – Focus on sesame pest and disease – Soil test based fertilizer recommendation – Remove the word model & start working on farmers’ field on wider scale “SBN showed the way and now it is our duty to scale out the technology in very wider scale” Discussions on presentations

9. Sesame quality and food safety (how to ensure quality at farm level, spot market to export) Scaling up of the 20 steps through cooperatives: experiences, challenges and the way forward Value addition: what is stakeholders’ future plan regarding sesame value addition? Group discussion on selected topics

10. Sesame quality and food safety – Capacity building – Selecting and promoting quality sesame seed (better oil content, colour, aroma…) – Strengthening linkage among stakeholders – Improving sesame pest and disease management – The market should pay for quality (cooperatives can encourage their farmers to produce quality sesame) – Farmers should apply all the 20 steps – Farmer cooperatives should strengthen their internal sesame quality control and management – Demonstrating harvesting and threshing machine

11. To further scale out through cooperatives – close linkage between agriculture with cooperatives – cooperatives should reward those member farmers who apply ’20 steps’ – capacity building of cooperative leaders and continuous follow up of activities were suggested by participants

12. Sesame marketing – a lot has been done by the support programme on sesame productivity improvement likewise the programme has to also work on market linkage and sales Sesame value addition – price of sesame seed is declining, – the price sesame oil is much better than sesame seed sold in export market – cleaning machine installed at Selam and Metema union should start functioning soon – There are initiatives to establish processing plant by investors and Selam union, which should be supported by the government said participants