A Review on Production Status and Consumption Pattern of Vegetable in Ethiopia

Agriculture is the main stay of Ethiopian economy, contributing 50% share in the gross domestic product (GDP) vegetables and root crops generate foreign currency earnings in the country. A serious challenge to human survival, particularly in the developing world, is the ever growing gap between human population and food supply. The World Health Organization Estimate that low fruit and Vegetable intake contributes to approximately 2.7 million deaths a year from chronic disease and causes about 31% of is chaemic heart diseases and 11% of strokes worldwide In the overall, WHO places low fruit and vegetable consumption among its twenty risk factors in global mortality, just behind the better known killers such as tobacco use and high cholesterol levels. The status of vegetable production including indigenous one and consumption in the country yet need further improvement. According to the CSA (2008) 453,608.8 ha of land is under vegetable in Ethiopia, in general. Production of vegetables contributes 2.95% of the total crops production, conversely, of the total production of vegetables. ). Large scale production and processing of fruits and vegetables is carried out only by state organizations. The number of small-scale producers involved in horticulture is estimated at 5.7 million farmers. The area under vegetables increased from 350,600 ha with production of 2.36 million tons in 2010 to 396,510 ha with production of 4.48 million tons in 2013 for smallholder farmers. This implies that the area cultivated to vegetables increased by 13% while the production increased by 103%, between 2010 and 2013. The proportion of households who did not produce/cultivate any vegetable was highest in Addis Ababa (99.7%), followed in Afar (94.9%), Dire Dawa (94.2%), Tigray (86.4%) and Harari (63.1%) regions. Recently, despite of the ups and downs observed, the demand for vegetables especially for export is increasing. Ethiopia mainly due to cereal based food habit is practicing and largely affect children’s in most part of the country. Many research reports indicated that an estimated five million people are suffering from lack of vitamins and essential minerals. A deficiency problem in Ethiopia especially for children’s rest on increasing the availability of vitamin. In general 60 to 80 % of health problems in Ethiopia are due communicable diseases and nutritional problems. Ethiopia has got an immense potential to develop intensive vegetable production especially at commercial scale. In general, the drawback to this sector include social and cultural habits of the population like dietary preferences for meat and other animal products, and distaste for vegetable crops, lack of consumer awareness, economic reasons of the local consumers, absence of nutrition intervention programme using vegetables. Keywords: production, consumption, vegetabl