It’s Hell, But Ethiopia Is Beating Some Odds To Eat

In a July interview with CNN’s Quest Means Business, Ethiopia’s minister for Planning and Development Fitsum Assefa (Ph.D.) admitted that in preparing the 10-year Development Plan (2020-2030), her office did not assume the “global as well as local shocks” that added to the “toll” on Ethiopia’s economy.

The shocks that impacted the Ethiopian economy in the past two years included drought caused by the failure of consecutive rain seasons in the south and southeastern part of the country; a hit by Covid-19; a locust swarm in the north; the war between the regional Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the Federal Government in Addis Ababa; sanctions from western governments due to the conflict; and the Russia-Ukraine war.

Despite all these, the Federal Government holds that it rose to the challenges by investing in agriculture and implementing a Homegrown Economic Reform. In one of his frequent visits to farming sites, PM Fitsum told the state broadcaster that wheat production had seen a 60 percent boost compared to the output of the previous year. He also said Ethiopia would satisfy local demand and start exporting wheat this year.

This, inevitably, is to be taken with caution, considering the country has been dependent on imported wheat to stabilize prices whenever there is a rise in domestic food prices, and that a considerable amount of wheat is imported as part of food aid by international donors. Imports of wheat constituted up to 85 percent of Ethiopia’s food crop imports.

The government’s optimistic picture of wheat production also points to the addition of the third season of production, the rise in the cultivated land using irrigation, and cluster farming that allowed for the use of technological inputs. Independent verification is yet to be made of government data.

Land Ownership Complications

Ethiopia’s food production, however, is complicated by other factors beyond just what happens on farms and gardens.

Apart from the global and internal “shocks” that are being felt at dinner tables, there is a major public policy debate on land ownership and its impact on productivity. Since the 1974 Ethiopian revolution that abolished the feudal system and the land reform that followed in 1975, ownership of land is in the domain of the public. The proclamation in March of 1975 prohibited the transfer of land use rights by sale, exchange, succession, mortgage, or lease, except upon death (even then only to the wife, husband, or minor children of the deceased). Article 40-3 of the current constitution enacted in 1995 states, “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the people of Ethiopia. The land is the property of the Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange.”

The successive land tenure policies that vested the ownership of land to the state, supporters argue, are meant to ensure equality, and provide protection against the accumulation of the most important resource and source of livelihood in the hands of the few. However, there are voices that call for reforming the land policy to give full ownership rights, including the right to transfer ownership, of rural land to individual farmers. These argue the land tenure policy failed not only to increase productivity and transform the economy but also to provide security of tenure to the farmers. Critics of the current tenure policy say the agriculture sector will never be able to cope with growth in population with an average farm size of less than 1 hectare per household.

High Food Insecurity

According to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security, food security is ensured when “all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food”. A 2022 report by Famine Early Warning Systems Network situates Ethiopia as a country with one of the worst food insecurities in the world, with record-breaking food assistance that needs to be brought on by the effects of protracted drought and continued insecurity. FEWSNET also predicted that through at least January 2023, widespread emergency and crisis outcomes such as high rates of acute malnutrition and hunger-related mortality are projected to occur in northern, central, southern, and southeastern Ethiopia.

As per FEWS, the spread of emergency is also anticipated in southern and southeastern pastoral areas, where drought conditions are anticipated to last through at least mid-2023 as a result of a historic fifth consecutive year with below-average rainfall in late 2022 induced by La Niña.  Due to poor to emaciated cattle body conditions caused by limited pasture and water availability, household livestock holdings are becoming increasingly difficult to sell and milk supply is extremely low. Acute malnutrition levels already fall into the “critical” and “extremely critical” categories. More than 7 million Ethiopians residing in the Afar, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s, and Somali regions find themselves unable to grow food due to the failure of rainy seasons.

Another natural disaster in late 2019 and through 2020 was the desert swarm that saw many farmers losing their entire crop or harvest before it fully matured. However, the impact of the desert swarm on food security was not well accounted for due to the conflict that broke out in November 2020 in the areas highly impacted by the desert swarm.

Many smallholder farmers in Ethiopia use traditional and low-cost farming methods such as oxen-drawn plows (or mareasha) to till the soil. Seeds are mainly sown by hand and most crops depend entirely on rainfall without reliable supplemental irrigation. As a result, food production has not been a highly productive process for smallholder farmers even when natural calamities didn’t present themselves as prominent challenges.

Toll of Conflict

For instance, aerial pictures with historical Google Earth imagery in 2021 show that less cropland was plowed as compared to similar times in prior years despite favorable rainfall patterns in the Northern part of the country. This is thought to be caused by the genera