Abstract

Teff is widely cultivated throughout Ethiopia as a staple cereal crop, which appears in everyone’s dishes of everyday life. With a gluten free and high nutrition values; teff could be the next super-grain and Injera could be the next super-food in the globe. Teff productions in terms of cultivated area and number of producers are incredibly increases over the last 14 years. Teff is the second most important cash crop and generating about 500 million USA dollar incomes per year for local farmers. Apart from this, teff producing farmers are highly depending on the behavior of the other teff producing farmers who spatially closed. Moreover, Teff straw is produced in the largest quantities estimating about 6.93% of the total quantity of cereal crop’s straw produced in the country; this helps to address the insufficient animal feed supply for animal production and productivity improvement through enhancing its palatability. The exports of teff in terms of injera in 2015 were estimated at around 10 million US dollar, and the main injera global market outlets were North America, Middle East, and Europe. Among several teff production constraints, technical inefficiency has a leading one. Due to the technical inefficiency of teff production; about 0.4ton/ha grain yield gap between the expected maximum potential and the actual teff grain yield. Teff grain yield gap is estimated about1.1 million ton in 2013 at countrywide due to technical inefficiency. Thus, this review as sought to ascertain of the economics of teff and put highlight policy implication for further assuring food security through teff.

Keywords: Ethiopia; Injera; Spatial analysis; Technical efficiency; Teff; Teff export