Ending the Cycle of Hunger in Ethiopia
 As news reports call attention to a burgeoning food crisis, as many as 15
million Ethiopians could face famine in the coming months.
The situation may seem particularly puzzling, as Ethiopia has increased its
food production by 70 percent since the 1980s. Last year, the country
experienced its second consecutive year of bumper crop production. Yet, the
current crisis looms as large as, or potentially even larger than, the 1984-85
famine.
Why does it keep happening? What can be done to prevent future famines?
There are four main issues underlying Ethiopia's recurring food crises: poor
governance (mostly in the past), the vulnerability of its farmers, problems with
the production of food, and markets that don't function.
Governance
At the heart of any food crisis is the issue of governance. Governments and
other institutions must be accountable and transparent to the people they serve,
and they need to ensure the participation of all sectors of society. In the case
of Ethiopia, the country emerged in the early 1990s from three decades of
protracted civil war and a repressive, centrally planned economy. In the 1990s,
the new government shifted its priorities to a mixed economy, liberalizing
markets, decentralizing decision-making, and investing in agriculture.
In spite of these positive measures, the recurrence of famine suggests that
further steps to good governance remain and that even with the best of policies,
it takes an extremely long time to redress Ethiopia's severe problems.
Unfortunately, the poor governance of the past has left a deep legacy of
poverty, which will take many years to overcome.
Vulnerability
Ethiopia's millions of small-scale farmers remain rooted in subsistence
agriculture. They are almost entirely dependent on the weather, and the country
is prone to drought three to four years out of every ten. Little investment
has been made in irrigation or other systems to manage water supply only about 5
percent of potentially irrigable land are irrigated. Not surprisingly, when the
rains failed last year, the number of needy people swelled dramatically.
People who are desperately poor do not have the capacity to withstand the
loss of food and income from crop failure or the death of livestock due to lack
of rain. The average annual income in Ethiopia is only about US$100 per person.
About 5 - 6 million people simply do not have the money to buy food, even in
periods of surplus.
Food-for-work programs, crop insurance and other safety net measures would
help to reduce the vulnerability of poor farmers. The government should also
invest in systems to better measure and forecast production and weather
patterns. They also need to improve management of food aid, including the
purchase of surplus stocks in good years, in order to cope with weather-related
disasters like those that occurred in 2002.
Production
Grain yields average little more than one ton per hectare in all of Ethiopia.
These yields are lower in drought-prone areas and are much less in drought
years. By contrast, U.S. farmers average nearly six tons of grain per hectare.
These low and uncertain yields result not only from unreliable rainfall, but
also from severe land degradation. Soil degradation stems from intensive farming
on steep and fragile lands with limited use of soil and water conservation
measures and very little recycling of organic materials, such as manure and crop
residues to the soil. These practices have led to severe problems of erosion
which averages nearly ten times the rate of soil formation on cultivated land in
the Ethiopian highlands and loss of soil fertility.
As a result, many of the soils are shallow and have little capacity to hold
moisture, greatly exacerbating the vulnerability of farmers to the effects of
drought. Because of the risks associated with drought and moisture stress,
farmers in drought-prone environments are also reluctant to adopt expensive
inputs, such as fertilizer and improved seeds, contributing to low yields and
depleted soils Ethiopia also suffers from low livestock productivity. Milk
yields are only about one fourth of the average yield for all developing
countries, due to limited availability of feed and grazing, unimproved breeding
stock, and diseases.
Underlying these problems are several root causes, including high population
pressure and lack of access to markets, infrastructure, appropriate technical
assistance, and other services. High population growth has forced farmers onto
smaller and smaller tracts of land with each generation, even as forests
disappear to accommodate more land for farming and grazing. Declining forest and
grazing area contributes to soil degradation on croplands, as households are
forced to burn animal dung and graze all available crop residues, rather than
returning such materials to the soil. Farmers in remote areas also find it
difficult and costly to purchase fertilizer
and other inputs and transport them over long distances on bad roads. In
northern Ethiopia, for example, the average distance to the nearest market town
is nearly 40 kilometers.
Despite these problems, IFPRI research in the highlands of northern Ethiopia
has shown that investments in roads, technical assistance, credit, education and
other services have improved conditions. Averting food crises in the future
requires increasing the incomes of the vast majority of the population, in part
through investing in research and extension to assist farmers in producing a
diversity of crops and livestock, including high-value products. Such
investments must be tailored to local conditions to be effective.
Ethiopia is comprised of 18 distinct agro-ecological zones, ranging from
mountains to deserts. No one-size-fits-all strategy will work in all areas.
Research and extension must also be demand driven, providing a menu of options
and facilitating local adaptation. For example, while fertilizer use is risky
and less attractive in drought-prone areas than in high rainfall areas,
construction of soil and water conservation structures such as stone terraces
has been found to be more profitable and hence more widely adopted (and adapted)
by farmers in such areas. Agricultural research and technical assistance
programs must build on such local differences and local innovation to be
effective.
Markets
A major root cause of the current crisis is the inability of markets to
efficiently and adequately perform the distribution of food from surplus areas
to deficit areas. This is not a new problem. In 1984, there were reports of
surplus in the south while one million people died of hunger in the northeastern
regions of the country. With poor roads, lack of market information, and no
access to credit, traders are sorely challenged to buy food from farmers and
sell it in places where it's needed. Only a quarter of food produced reaches the
market. That locks poor farmers into subsistence agriculture, which condemns
them to poverty.
In the 2001- 2002 season, farmers in some regions achieved excellent harvests
using high-yielding seeds and fertilizers. Unfortunately, they were unable to
get their crops to markets located far beyond their own communities. With a glut
of grain concentrated in small areas, the prices plunged by as much as 80
percent, even as other regions suffered from food shortages. As a result of low
prices, farmers were unable to recoup production costs and repay loans for
fertilizer. If farmers can't make money from their crops, they can't buy
expensive inputs, and as a result, production is dropping dramatically.
Ethiopian grain traders are mainly small-scale entrepreneurs, operating with
very few assets. Only one third can access bank finance; six percent own a
vehicle; and less than half have a telephone or permanent storage facilities.
Traders also have very little formal business training, and most have not
completed high school. They operate on a small-scale basis over short distances,
and therefore do not benefit from cost-savings of scale and distance.
The markets in which this fledging private sector operates are poorly
developed.
Ethiopia's transport and telecommunications infrastructure is among the least
developed in the world; there is virtually no commercial legal system available
for enforcing contracts; there is no public market information system; and there
is no system for inspecting and certifying products.
As a result, transaction costs of marketing are very high, with consumer prices
up to five times the producer price, linked to high transport and handling costs
that are directly caused by the lack of appropriate infrastructure and
institutions.
Abdu Awol, a grain wholesaler based in the surplus-producing region of
Wollega in western Ethiopia, is one of the rare Ethiopian grain traders who once
attempted to move grain over long distances in order to reach new markets. He
transported maize 900 kilometers across three regions to northern Ethiopia,
where he heard prices were higher. It took him two and half weeks to get there,
instead of the two or three days it should have. He was stopped on numerous
occasions by road checks and incurred much expense in bribes and administrative
fees, in addition to transport and handling costs. The poor condition of the
roads meant that he lost a considerable amount of grain along the way as the
sacks burst. When he arrived in the market town of Mekele in Tigray, he could
not find the buyer who had agreed to purchase his grain. At the end of the day,
when he completed his balance sheet, he realized he had lost money. He has never
repeated this attempt.
In order to make markets work for poor and hungry people, Ethiopia must
develop ways to disseminate market information, offer financing to small-scale
farmers and traders, provide contract enforcement, certify product qualities,
and reduce risk. The government and international aid donors must invest in
infrastructure: roads, telecommunications networks, and modern storage.
The long road
Ultimately, Ethiopia can make great strides in reducing poverty and breaking
the cycle of recurring famine, but it will take time. Because 85 percent of its
population is agriculture-based, Ethiopia must remain committed to developing
this most critical sector. Agricultural growth can serve as a springboard to
achieving broad-based economic growth. Impoverished rural people need
alternatives to subsistence farming. high-value crops and livestock, as well as
non-farm sources of income.
Even as the Ethiopian government and international community focus on famine
relief, they must not overlook these critical issues.
Reproduced with permission from the International Food Policy Research
Institute www.ifpri.org. Article text and
image © copyright IFPRI.
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