Food Security Issues in Ethiopia - The Africa Center
Food Security Issues in Ethiopia
presented by Jim Borton
at the Ethiopia Interest Group Meeting
Hilton Hotel, 1 December 1995
Ladies and Gentleman
It is a great honour to speak today
but when I review the list of previous and up-coming speakers feel a little awkard - you have so many distinguised speakers - real authorities on their subjects and experts in their fields. I am an English teacher not an authority on food issues and certainly not an expert in either agriculture or agricultural economcis.
Lenorad berstien, the Amercian conductor, composer and pianist once said it was very convient to be both a conductor and a concert pianist - when he was a conductor the critics said he didn't do badly for a pianist and when he performed as a pianist they said well that wasn't too bad for a conductor.
You are known as what one might term a formatible group - one where angels might fear to tread - so I hope you will think - not too bad for an English teacher.
Friend ask what talk about
I said something about food issues
Oh do you mean champagne and caviar - yes I will talk a little about champagne and caviar as well as Hilton Black Forest cake and all those wonderful pastas with rich cream sauces at Castelles.
Also about famines, production, population, coping mechanism and measuring technics - purchasing power and poverty - also, perhaps, a little bit about hope and the future.
Ethiopia and famine - they seem to go together and, although we have recenlty have some good years, famine not new to Ethiopia, neither are droughts, plagues, epidemics and pestilence which cause the famines new.
From bibical times there are references to severe famines in Ethiopia; droughts are the most noted cause of famines but frequenlty droughts are accompained by epidemics and pestilence and invasions of migratory pests as well as an upsurge in our own, homw grown pests - like wello bush criket, smut, stem rust. stem borer, shoe fly if teff, fungus infections, stryiga weed infestations and rodents of all shapes and sizes- in fact who would want to be a farmer.
Droughts which kill cattle one year may cause massive famine the next
Famines because of locusts invasion are also well documented even as early as the 17th century with the Porguese traveller Alvares observing in Tirgray that;
In these past and in all the dominions of the Preseter John there is as very great plague of locusts which destroy the fresh crops and trees on a very big scale. Their multitude, which covers the earth and fills the air, is not to be believed; they darken the light of the sun. I say again that is is not a thing to be believed by any one who has not seen them.... It is known the day before (that they are on the way - not becuase the people see them, but becuas they see the yellow sun, and the earth yellow, that is the shadow which they cast over it.
In the mid 18th centrury there were two succesive plagues of locuts which were described by a local chronicler as covering "the land like a fog"
The great famine which raged in Ethiopia from 1888 to 1892 was probaby cause by a combination of a deadly invasion of Rinderpest which killed off the cattle needed for plowing and drought, yet another invasion of locust and army worm. During this famine, prbably the greatest in Ehiopian history, it is estimated taht 90 % of the cattle died and a significantnper cent of the population.
More recently there have been famines in 1975 and a serious famine in 1984/85 which receive world-wide attention and a massive out pouring of assistance from the world. In spite of this assistanvce hundreds on thousands died and massive - and deadly camps formed in the north where still more thousands died form malnutiriton and disease that accompanied lving in crowed conditons.
Since 1985 we of the international community and the government of Ethipia have made signifcant strides in trying to understand the causes of famine, the early warning indicators of famine and food hardship, coping mechanism and relief mechanisms. We do not have all the answers by any means but we do know that famine does not have to be envetable.
There are, however, severe limitiations on our knowledge, and, to a certain extent, on the tools avaialble to us to combat famine and the effects of drought.
Steven Hawkins, the brillent theorotical mathaticain and author of the book A Short History of Time, was told by his publisher he could write a "popular" book about theoricial mathematics if he didn't put any numbers or formulas in it. Perhaps the greatest indication of Hawkins true genius is that he indeed write an emminately readably book about this obsurce topic that included only one formula - E=mc squared.
I am not in Mr Hawkins league and I am going to have to use some numbers but at least you don't have to pay much attention to them as I will use them as an indcation of a method only - let us consider them pretend numbers
Currenlty FAO/WFP Crop and food assessment mission in Ethiopia to wrk with Govt in tryng to estimate crop produciton and food needs for the country.
Similar mission have visited EThiopia for the last six or seven years and it is an intersting example of both the degree of sophisitcaton and sevre limitations in tryhing to quantify information in Ethiopia.
A very simplfied version of this process - again with essentialy some pretned numbers
Three elemnts are examine: produciton, consumption and relief needs
Production
estimate of No. ha plowed
estimate of prodction per ha
estimate of root crops - converted to grain equivilant
estimate of meat, eggs and animal production - converted
less non food uses - beer etc
less grain held back for seeds
less crop losses
net production
Consumption
estmated population x estimated yearly grain equiviant per person consumed
Relief needs
estimated pupolaton in need
number of months in need
amount per month needed per peron = relief needs
production - consumption - perhaps negative number
prodcution - consumption - identified relief needs = structial deficit - or in a sense everybody eats a little less or they are the unidentied beneficiareis
looks straight forward but lets look at the constraints:
Particulary impotant and significant is per capita consumption
What is 157 kgs per year - sounds like a lot
But reality it is about 1600 Kcal a day
What is 1600 Kcal - it is here is where we talk about Black Forest Cake and all those nice rich pasta with cream sauces at Castelies - they are not quite 1600 Kcal a serving but damn close
WHO recommends for pregnant and lactaing women around 3000 Kcal a day. A person involved in manual labor - 2500 to 2800 per day
a growing child over 2000 per day.
When we talk about food imports we are not talking about helping the Ethiopian population reach these recommended numbers of 2500 or 3000 Kcal per day - we are talking about just maintaining that incrediable low number of only 1600 K cal a day.
With only 1600 odd Kcal a day how do we expect Ethiopia to recovery - how do we expect Ethiopia to develop?
With a population explosion of around 3% how will Ethiopia feed itself
Over the last 20 years there has been a tremendous erosion of assests in the rural areas. Yes people can cope - have coped over since 1985 without major loss of life but at what cost.
Let us look at a simplied picutre of what has happend over the last 20 years and particulary over the last 10 years
graph
yes they have coped at the expense of household, community and envioremental assests - the assest essential for the next generation.
Unfortunatley we understand very little about the household decision makign process but the reaction of the rural famrers in Ethiopia to hardship and shortages is not much different to or own reaction to short term econmic hadrship - it is a differnece in degree and probably the rural farmer uses a much more sophisticated approach than we do.
First, like us - he does without - no more chapaing and caviar
a belt tightening - one less meal a day and less food at the meal
use of famine foods - traditional wild vegtable, berries and root crops that would not normally be eaten and, frequenlty have only limited nutritional value.
migration in seach of labor and daily wage - the dual function of one less mouth to feed and the possiblity of cash being sent home.
Indicnelty there is a great deal of migration that is normal in the highlands
search for sources of cash income - sale of firewood and charcoal are the most common - the problem is that this leads to even further deforestation and land degredation yet further reducing yields for the next year
then come the hard decisions
consumtion of seed stocks being kept for next years planting
sale of farm implements
sale of livestock and plow animals
forced migration in seach of relief and assistance
back to graph
in many sense the highland farmer has never recovered from the 1985 and all our relief assistance has, at best just kept the status quo
Although we are all involved in meeting the current food shortages, we are also looking towards the future and to break the cycle of dependency. Drought creates hardship but it does not have to result in famine. The root causes of recurrent famines in Ethiopia lie in poverty and under-development.
The Government, with the help of the UN System and the international community, is now actively and vigorously pursuing a new approach to attack these root causes and to use relief assistance to further the development process.
Over the last decade or so vulnerability has increased - from a mere 3% affected by food shortages during the 1978 drought to 18% of the population affected in 1984/85. The cost in human suffering and to the already impoverished economy has been growing with each successive cycle of drought. This increasing vulnerability can be attributed to:
the poor policy environment of the previous government which combined strict controls on pricing and marketing with a low priority given to agricultural production - between 1985 and 1991 agriculture received only 9% of the budget compared to 22% for defense;
lack of badly needed inputs such as fertilizer, improved seeds, agricultural implements, plant protection chemicals and veterinary services;
massive land degradation, particularly in the highlands where over 80% of the population live, caused by population pressures, over-grazing, poor agricultural practices, wood cutting and a lack of land protection measures; and,
perhaps most significant of all, the rapid growth in population which has nullified whatever gains have been made in agricultural production and forced increased cultivation of marginal lands, further exacerbating land degradation.
The liberalisation of the economy, increased agricultural inputs and improved security had an immediate effect on agricultural production following the change of Government in 1991 and, following good rains in 1992, there was a dramatic increase in production. The Government has also implemented a National Policy on Population but halting Ethiopia's rapid increase in population will take many years.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
While these measures are vital, it is the changes in relief operations that I want to emphasise - measures that will help us both save lives and accelerate the development process.
This process of reducing vulnerability to food shortages and improving disaster management capacities began with a UN sponsored national conference in 1988 on the formulation of a National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Strategy for Ethiopia. The conference, which was attended by high-level decision makers, researchers and relief workers from Ethiopia and the international community and, among other things, examined the experience gained in disaster prevention and preparedness in Ethiopia and re-affirmed the necessity of formulating a national disaster prevention and preparedness strategy for the country.
Although a National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Strategy and an Emergency Code to implement the National Strategy were prepared in 1990, it was not endorsed by Mengistu's government and lay dormant for several years.
With the overthrow of the previous regime and a new set of national priorities, the concept of a National Strategy was revived and, eventually, revised to suit the major policy and administrative changes taking place in the country.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
This Strategy is not just a document but a concrete plan with the long-term objective of eliminating the root causes of vulnerability to drought. The plan includes these main elements:
that no human life shall perish for want of assistance in times of disaster;
that disaster-affected households get adequate income through relief programmes to give them better access to food and other basic necessities;
that the assets and economic fabric of the affected areas be preserved to enable speedy post disaster recovery;
and, most important of all, that relief operations contribute to economic growth and development through the use of food in employment generation schemes.
This last point, that relief to able bodied persons shall be through participation in employment generation schemes, is the key to the link between relief and rehabilitation. Likewise, as many of the employment schemes or Food-for-Work projects, which are drawn up by the communities themselves, directly relate to the felt-needs of the people, they involve fundamental programmes to protect the land, improve roads and develop water supplies and village infrastructure.
Furthermore, if land degradation can be curtailed, access to markets and services improved and the general well being of the population enhanced then vulnerability will also be reduced.
The United Nations system, and particularly UNDP, have worked closely with the government throughout the development of the National Strategy. The Fifth Country Programme, which was developed by the Transitional Government with assistance from UNDP, provides the framework for various UN and donor inputs into the overall development process. The objectives of the 5th Country Programme - increased food production, development of human resources, reduction of vulnerability to famine, protection of the environment, national capacity building and the creation of sustainable livelihoods - have emerged as a direct result of lessons learnt in Ethiopia in the ten years following the famine of 1984/85. They each relate, either directly or indirectly, to the issue of food security and, consequently, are fundamental to the whole philosophical basis of the National Policy on Disaster Prevention and Management. This anniversary and these kinds of meetings are an opportunity to increase public understanding of the linkages between development and food security.
The slide into yet more abject poverty is not inevitable. The first steps are in place but implementation of such a comprehensive programme cannot be done in a year. Some free distributions must continue if lives are to be saved. However, it is indeed heartening to see the central government, Regional Administrations and NGOs making every effort, even in these times of great hardship and limited resources, to adhere to the spirit of the new National Strategy.
Will it all work - maybe
The probelms are immense but there is a real commitment from this government - in fact given the history of the rebel movement and the impact drought had on the people of Tigray - household food security underlies and is everything for this goverment. Famines or potential famines will not be ingnored by this government as with previous governments - their political survial as well as their "moral" survial if one can use such a term are inherent in outlook and view on food issues.
One can see problmes at every step of the way - if you want it is easy to say that nothing works and nothing will work and nothing is beter.
Lord Mountbattan given the thankless task of overseeing the independency of India from Britian, said of Jenah, the leader of the Muslem League and a staunch advocate of a seprated country for India's Moslem population, he was a man who could find a problem in any solution.
We are probably looking at a very good 1995 main harvest - what might be considered optimal - this is certainly not all because of changes on Govt policy or increased agricultural inputs - it is good and timely rains and no pests but increase ag inputs and a concentrated effort have helped. - but this is a good year theere will still be bad years in the future when once again massive imports of food aid will be needed- but maybe we will make better use of our food aid and the next druoght will be seen more as a hickup in a steady move toward selfsufficiency rather than yet another devestating castophorey from which the rural farmer may not recover.
THANK YOU
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