Menagesha Biotech Industry PLC (MBI) is a private bio-fertiliser company established in 2012 GC. Its objective is to produce and distribute bio-fertilisers with a vision of becoming the leading bio-fertiliser company in the country. MBI uses the latest facilities to produce the most effective, dependable, and eco-friendly products. In 2024 MBI had a production capacity of 250,000 packets of bio-fertiliser annually which is adequate to cover 62,500 hectares of land. The major crops served by MBI are soybean, faba bean, field pea, chickpea, lentil, haricot bean, and mung bean.

The production capacity of the processing plant saw improvements across the cropping seasons since its establishment, but MBI faced various challenges including a reliance on agro-dealer distribution channels and not having direct business linkages with core actors such as cooperatives, unions and seed enterprises. The company had limited skills and capacity to assess rhizobium inoculant demand, no clear business plan or marketing strategy, and limited communication with key public stakeholders (such as agriculture and cooperative promotion offices) to promote its products. In addition, awareness of the benefit of rhizobium inoculant at all stakeholder levels has been low, limiting demand. Use of rhizobium on fields where it has not been used before can raise yields by up to 35% at low cost.

Therefore, MBI had been operating at around half its capacity and planned to expand its product distribution in high legume production areas of the country including Oromia and other regions. Accordingly, MBI planned to reach out to 10,700 farmers in Oromia through the CASA pilot linked with the contract farming models of four edible oil and oil cake meal processors. The processors have targeted four soybean production woredas (Bedelle, Chewaka, Dabo Hana and Dhidhessa) in Oromia for piloting inoculant supply chain.

Promotion of Rhizobium Inoculant to Smallholder Farmers for Increased Production of Soybean

MBI struggled with effective promotion and distribution of its products though it has high production capacity and there are strong benefits of its product over other soil fertilisers such as chemical ones. These include economic benefits for smallholder farmers via opportunities to increase productivity through maintaining soil fertility and health. In addition, the products are highly environmentally friendly.

Thus, the objective of this CASA partnership with MBI, begun in May 2024, was to raise smallholder productivity by addressing promotion and distribution challenges on rhizobium inoculant through tailored technical assistance and financial support. CASA intended to demonstrate the benefits of a combination of inoculant and improved soybean seeds by piloting a distribution model through the contract farming arrangements of other CASA project partners that other processors could copy into their business models via evidence and learning dissemination. CASA linked MBI to processors to supply inoculant to smallholders via existing and planned contract farming arrangements with cooperatives. It also facilitated links between MBI and seed companies to encourage the combined supply of rhizobium and seed via any market channels as standard practice. MBI co-organised some demo-plots together with other CASA partners but then their management and shareholders had a change of business direction and were no longer interested in pursuing this business model, so the partnership terminated in September 2024. The company has since been closed.

Updated: November 2025