The Eleventh Regional Wheat Workshop For Eastern ... - Cimmyt

A WELCOME ON BEHALF OF THE CIMMYT BOARD OF TRUSTEES
lohan Holmberg
Ambassador of Sweden to Ethiopia and Vice Chair, CIMMYT Board of Trustees
Dear participants and friends,
I may be an ambassador now, but my background is in agriculture and I worked with rural
development in Ethiopia during the 1970s. I am here today as a representative of the
CIMMYT Board to welcome you all to this workshop. Let me say at the outset that I am
proud to represent CIMMYT. This is, as most of you know, one of the oldest and also largest
of the CGIAR centers. Allow me on this occasion to brag a little about CIMMYT. While I
may be partial, I have reason to believe that it is one of the very best CGIAR centers in terms
of scientific output. It certainly is one of the leading CGIAR centers in terms of
biotechnology and it is in the forefront as regards policies on IPRs. Given its mandate on
maize and wheat it is what is called a commodity center and as such has a better sense of
purpose than other centers with less clear mandates. World class research is being conducted
at CIMMYT. Recently, CIMMYT received a prestigious prize for its research on highprotein
maize. I am pleased that you can come here and share some of CIMMYT' s results.
I already mentioned that I lived in Ethiopia during the 1970s. In fact, I lived here for five
years working in agriculture and in the very area that you will visit tomorrow, the Arsi region
some 170 km from here. I often get the question how Ethiopia of today compares with the
Ethiopia that I knew 25 years ago. What I will do this morning is to try to answer that
question from the perspective of agricultural development.
It pleases me enormously that you will all be making a field trip tomorrow to the Kulumsa
Research Center. In the bad old days, Kulumsa was an Italian farm; there are still Italian
writings visible on some of the buildings. Later, in the· 1960s, Swedish experts identified
Chilalo awraja in Arsi region as suitable for a new experimental rural development project
trying what were then very innovative ideas, derived from the Comilla Academy in
Bangladesh, to integrate different development activities designed to reduce rural poverty.
This project started in 1967 after one year of preparation. From the outset, it developed
Kulumsa as a seed farm and research station. When you go there tomolTow, most of the
buildings that you will see were constructed as part of the Swedish-supported Chilalo
Agricultural Development Unit, or CADU project. If you go on to Asella, you may see the
project center with many more buildings - all built as part of CADU.
The Swedes left the project in the late 1980s. By then, there were considerable problems
arising out of the then government's policy of promoting collective approaches to agriculture,
including forcing farmers to move into collective villages. It had become very difficult to
assess project results and staff were very disenchanted. I think it is fair to say that it was with
a certain relief that the Swedes terminated their support, but we were eventually replaced by
Italians. Earlier this year, I participated in an OECD-sponsored evaluation of the large Italian
aid program to Ethiopia. I was pleased to note that the Italian support in Arsi not only
continues, but is regarded as one of the best projects in the Italian portfolio today!
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