Overview

Agriculture produced about a third of GDP in 2024/25 and employed more than two thirds of workers. Agriculture, forestry and fishing generated ETB 4,953.8 billion of value added in the fiscal year 2024/25, 32.8% of GDP at current prices, worth US$41.5 billion on World Bank data⁸¹². Real value added in agriculture grew by 7.3% in 2024/25, against GDP growth of 9.2%³. The Ethiopian Statistics Service found 69.4% of employed persons working in agriculture in 2024/25, and the ILO's modelled estimate for 2025 is 60.1%⁴⁹. The 2021/22 Agricultural Sample Survey, which did not cover Tigray, counted 19.74 million private peasant holders with an average of 0.90 hectares each¹⁰.

The latest crop survey covers the 2021/22 Meher season. Private peasant holdings outside Tigray harvested 32.8 million tonnes of grain in the 2021/22 Meher season, including 10.75 million tonnes of maize, 5.81 million tonnes of wheat and 5.61 million tonnes of teff⁵. No Meher crop survey after 2021/22 was published on the ESS website by October 2026¹¹. The Ministry of Agriculture reported 3.5 million hectares of dry-season irrigated wheat in 2025¹². The 2021/22 livestock survey counted 66.3 million cattle on private peasant holdings outside Tigray¹³.

Coffee led agricultural export earnings in 2024/25. Coffee exports earned US$2,665.1 million in the fiscal year 2024/25, 31.9% of merchandise exports, and agricultural commodities together 50.1% (own calculation)³. On UN Comtrade data Ethiopia exported US$2.57 billion of agri-food products in 2023 and imported US$2.38 billion, with fats and oils and cereals the largest import groups⁷.

Agriculture received 8.6% of outstanding bank credit in June 2025. Banks and the Development Bank of Ethiopia held ETB 166.3 billion of loans to agriculture on 30 June 2025, about US$1.23 billion at the IMF end-of-period rate (own calculation), and agriculture received 22.3% of the loans disbursed in 2024/25³⁶. In 2024, 48.8% of adults had an account and 2.6% had borrowed from a formal financial institution¹⁴¹⁵. The National Bank of Ethiopia raised its policy rate from 15% to 16% on 13 July 2026 and removed its ceiling on credit growth¹⁶¹⁷.

Rainfall in 2022 was the lowest in the ERA5 record. On ERA5 data annual rainfall averaged 995 mm in 1991–2020, and 2022, at 783 mm, was the lowest in the ERA5 series for 1950–2025 (own calculation)¹⁸. UN OCHA reported about 6.85 million livestock deaths in the drought-affected south and east between late 2021 and March 2023¹⁹. Agriculture accounted for 70.6% of greenhouse gas emissions excluding land use in 2023 (own calculation)²⁰.