Socioeconomics and Extension Research Directorate

General Background

The Socioeconomics and Extension Research Directorate (SEERD) is one of the five research directorates  under Tigray Agricultural Research Institute. It is organized into two sub-programs. The first sub-program (casèteam) is socioeconomic research wing that mainly focuses on conducting different studies related to the farming systems, agricultural opportunities and challenges, institutions and their contributions to the agricultural development, etc and generate evidence and information that is useful for further investigation/research, development interventions and policy making. The second sub-program is the agricultural extension research. This sub-program ďeals with promoting the generated agricultural technologies and facilitating transfer of technologies, knowledge and information to the end users via the formal extension system.
The research directorate is also responsible to coordinate multistakeholder forums that are crucial to foster integration and partnership among all concerned stakeholders in the agriculture sector. It jointly works with different research and development actors on the identification and prioritization of çritical economic, social, natural, institutional, and agricultural policy relateď bottlenecks of the agricultural sector and to provide alternative research-based solutions. It also empower farmers and grassroots practitioners to actively participate in the technology development process.

The directorate currently has 25 staff members, with 20 of them being MSc holders (4 women) and 5 BSc graduates working at 8 research centers in the region.
Thematic (research) areas

• Technology promotion (demonstration, pre-extension popularization and Scaling) 
• Adoption and impact study
• Gender analysis  
• Agricultural policy and institutional analysis 
• Market research/value chain analysis 
• Extension system analysis 
• Panel data development and analysis: 
• Analysis of natural and environmental resources economics
• production constraints analysis 

Focus areas of the directorate

• Improve land, livestock and labor productivity
• Food and nutrition security 
• Market oriented commodities and import substitution
• Improve decision making power based on scientific evidences 
• Participatory research approach 
• Empower women and landless youth 
• Reduce post-harvest loss and human drudgery
• Reduce deforestation
• Transforming conventional agricultural practices
• Organizing, publishing and disseminating research findings

A significant outreach of improved agricultural technologies in crops, livestock, natural resource, and mechanization technologies was revealed by the research directorate in collaboration with different partners and supporters. During the past years, the research results have been compiled in the form of research papers and extension materials and distributed to a wider audience. In the last ten years, 53 research papers in proceedings and 45 journal articles have been published. The research directorate has made the results of the research publicly available on social media and local and national programs.

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