The grower is located 650 km north of Addis Ababa and Amanuel Abraha, General Manager of Raya, said that their location in southern Tigray is the perfect location weather-wise to move into year-round production.
The company produces their fruits and vegetables on 100 hectares of land with modern irrigations systems. Growing in open field, greenhouses and tunnels, they have 6 hectares of greenhouses and around 15 hectares of strawberries grown in tunnels.
"We expanded our strawberry growing around a year ago with the idea of starting to import to Europe and the Middle East. Even though we operate on a small scale we have already been very successful. Ethiopia has good climate, soil and water, with good opportunities to produce year round with less impact on the environment." said Amanuel.
Unfortunately this year brought some very unusually cold weather for Ethiopia in the middle of Jan- through to the middle of Febraury. Amanuel said that he had never seen anything like it in the 5 years he has been working with the farm. The National Meteorological Agency in Ethiopia reported temperatures as low as -7.4 in some areas, with temperatures staying below zero during the daytime as well. Lucky for Raya Farms, products like fruits and vegetables can recover quickly, but that wasn't the case for grain and maize growers.
"Financed by the Ethiopian Exporters Association for fruit and veg, I was given the opportunity to visit Fruit Logistica for the first time ever this year. It's a great show and the event has been a great opportunity to meet other growers from all over the world and learn from each other." said Amanuel.
According to the Ethiopian Ministry of Ag, "There has been a complete and dynamic change in the history of Ethiopia's agriculture. There is successive development in agricultural productivity. An eight per cent average growth of productivity has been registered for the last 7 consecutive years. About 11.7 million small-holder households account for approximately 95 per cent of Agricultural GDP and 85 per cent of employment opportunities. The necessity to transform this huge sector is unquestionable. That is why our government has demonstrated a strong commitment to agriculture and the rural development sector by allocating to it more than 10 per cent of the country's total budget."
Amanuel concluded, "We have been hard at working trying to become Global Gap certified and hope to have certification in the next couple of months and we can't wait to start exporting our strawberries, grapes, tomato, papaya, fine beans and chili peppers to start with."
For more information:
Amanuel Abraha
Ray Horti Farms
Tel: +251 116 183179
Fax: +251 116 185106
Email: info@rayahortifarm.com
rayafortifarms@gmail.com
www.rayahortifarm.com