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International Food Policy Research Institute
Addis Tribune
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 is 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
whether-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 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 capacitate 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 land for farming and grazing. Declining forest and
grazing area contributes to soil degradation on croplands, as households are
forced to burn animal dung 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 distance to the nearest market town is nearly 40 kilometers.
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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 made up of 18 distinct agro-ecological zones, ranging from
mountains to deserts. No none-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 sectors 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 purplus-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.
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