In Ethiopia: Too many people, too little land and a changing clim..

In Ethiopia: Too many people, too little land and
a changing climate

03 February, 2012 | By Laura Lance
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Wolayto-Soddo, Ethiopia

The highway southwest of

Addis Ababa to Wolayto-

Soddo is wide and smooth,

but there is no such thing in

Ethiopia as setting the

cruise control and just

cruising, as one would expect to do on the wide open Canadian
Prairies.

With nearly 80 million people, Ethiopia is densely populated and
most of its people live as subsistence farmers in rural areas. We
share this highway with other users, including a steady stream of
pedestrians and livestock -- cattle, goats, sheep and the poor-man's
B-train, the donkey, carrying everything from bags of grain or
firewood to containers filled with water, to furniture.

As Sam Van der Ende, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank's field co-
ordinator, deftly manoeuvres us through the traffic, at times forced
from highway speed to a complete stop for a wayward donkey or
zebu (bovine) that refuses to budge, it becomes clear that safe
travel here requires keen intuition for the meandering unpredictable
flow -- and a good horn. After all, if a pedestrian or livestock gets
hit by a vehicle, under Ethiopian law the driver is automatically
responsible.

One of the members of our group, Al Friesen, of Radio Southern
Manitoba, observed that whereas drivers in North America use
their vehicle's horn as a form of aggression, in Ethiopia it is used to
announce, "I am here."

We are travelling a day's drive southwest of Addis Ababa to into a
district that is known in food-aid circles as the Green Famine Belt.
While not lush, there is green growth in the fields and hillsides,
forested hillsides and water running in the streams.

Green isn't a colour usually associated with famine. From the
roadside, at least, it looks like a reasonably productive area.
Yet many of these families are not more than a month or two away
from not having enough to eat at any given time, a factor of their
grinding poverty, the region's high population density and an
increasingly variable climate.

It's why for several years the Canadian Foodgrains Bank has been
involved in the region through its Canadian partners, World Relief
Canada and Evangelical Missionary Church, and the two locally
based Kale Hewyet Church branches. Through cash-for-work and
food-for-work projects, the families most at risk of running out of
food are able to receive support while working on projects that
benefit the community.

These projects tend to be oriented toward soil conservation through
terracing erosion-prone hillsides and reforestation, as well as road
maintenance. And because there is never enough aid to go around,
the potential project participants are selected after a complicated
exercise in community consensus.

The families most in need are identified by government and
community leaders, but then the finalists are chosen by a community
meeting. If picked, the household must supply labour to the project
in exchange for 75 kilograms per month of maize, if it is a food-for-
work project, or 242 Ethiopian birrs (C$13.92) per month.

Although people can have long-term tenure in Ethiopia, and land
can be passed from generation to generation, they don't own their
land outright -- so it cannot be bought and sold. As families grow,
their land parcels shrink and their capacity to acquire more through
leasing is limited. The pressure on the common grazing areas
becomes more intense and the pressure unsustainable.

The growing landlessness is made worse by the weird weather the
region has been experiencing. Some call it climate change, but
whatever you choose to call it, it's wreaking havoc with local food
security.

The rains on which people depend for growing food have become
increasingly unpredictable. Whether those rains come too early, too
late, or not at all, they are a recipe for hunger.

"A better job"

Bekele, a farmer we met in the hills outside of Soddo in the
Wolayta district, told us Monday he's still waiting for the January
rains to come -- rains that tease his sweet potato crop into
producing tubers. He's running out of time.

With two wives and three children to support, Bekele said that if
the sweet potato crop failed, he would sell one of the family's two
heifers to buy food to tide them over, hopefully until the next harvest.

It's this kind of survival strategy that food aid agencies hope to
prevent. Livestock are assets, at once representing a family's
relative wealth and its savings account. Once it starts selling assets
in order to eat, they are predisposed to a free fall further into
poverty.

Many of the farmers we've met over the past several days farm a
hectare or less of land. Even in a good year, they are barely
producing enough maize, sweet potato and haricot beans to feed
their families much less have leftovers to sell for cash.
If the weather doesn't co-operate, they can quickly be thrown into
a food crisis.

Support from either government or non-government agencies can
help tide them over, but no one is fooled, least of all the project
participants, into thinking it is a long-term solution.

The search is on for ways to achieve higher levels of productivity,
make it possible for these farmers to acquire more land, and
develop alternative sources of income.

Simon Lema, a 45-year-old farmer in the Damat Wodye district
south of Wolayata Soddo, said his dream for his eight children is for
all of them to get an education. "I am not thinking they will stay on
small land," he said. "I expect if I send them to school, I hope they
will get a beter job."

-- Laura Rance is the editor of the Manitoba Co-operator,
reporting this week from Ethiopia on a media food study tour
with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Watch this site this week
for updates on her travels.

Courtesy