Large-scale demonstrations of selected crop varieties with their production package were conducted in the West Shewa zone of Oromia, Ethiopia. The objective of the study was to create wider access to recently released agricultural technologies using large-scale technology demonstration approaches and enhancing the productivity of selected crop varieties to smallholder farmers in the study areas. Improved crop technologies of tef, bread wheat, food barley, malt barley, chickpea, and faba bean with their production package were demonstrated on a cluster basis. For the success of the LSD, the training of trainers was provided for the agricultural experts, development agents, government officials, and farmers focusing on crop production and management practices, post-harvest handling, and market linkage. During the 2018/19 cropping season, 56.26 quintals of improved seed were distributed and a total of 134.92 hectares of land were covered. In this LSD a total of 242 farmers directly benefited from the introduced technologies. From the areas covered a total of 1,387 quintals of outputs was harvested from the demonstrated technologies. To evaluate the performance of the technologies and to share experiences among the participants field days were conducted in the Ejere and Ejersa Lafo districts. In the field days organized, a total of 363 participants representing farmers; region, zone, and district-level agricultural experts, researchers, and other stakeholders participated. The yield performance of crop technologies with full production package and appropriate crop rotation was more beneficial to farmers through clustering approaches. Hence, governments, farmers' organizations, and concerned stakeholders have to focus on availing full crop technology packages for cluster farming with rotational crops to enhance crop production and productivity.
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Getahun et al. (2023) studied this question.