Food and famine in Ethiopia

Having enough food is often a problem in parts of Ethiopia. This article looks food and famine, and then investigates the problems facing an area called Wadla.

• Is there enough food in the world?
There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone, yet people are still going without. Every day 35,000 children in the world die of hunger-related causes. Over one billion people are chronically hungry and lack sufficient food on a long-term basis.

• Food within a country
To stop hunger there needs to be enough food available within a country to feed all the people in that country.

National food availability = (food produced + food imported) - food exported

Sometimes a country does not have enough food and will need to produce or import more to meet people's needs. Most of the time countries do have enough food, but if it is not distributed evenly some areas may lose out.

• Food in the household
Households need to be able to grow, gather or purchase enough food for their needs. They also need to have ways of resisting sudden shocks like a poor harvest or loss of wages due to sickness.
Even in households with enough food, some people might lose out if food is not shared fairly. In some countries, food reserves may be given to boys before girls. Many poor women go hungry in order to ensure that their children have enough to eat.

• What is famine?
Famine contains three elements: food shortage, starvation and excess mortality. It has a greater effect on the most vulnerable in society. Famine is caused by many complex factors including: poor climatic and environmental conditions, population growth, market failure or war.

• Food aid
Sometimes a country may be forced to ask for aid in the form of money or food. Emergency food aid is given in times of famine or disaster, and often helps the shortterm survival of many people. However, the majority of food aid is delivered on a continuous basis as programme or project aid. It has been argued that this is actually a way for Northern countries to get rid of extra food, and that it encourages dependency, changes eating habits, allows Northern countries to exert influence over Southern countries, keeps prices at an artificially low level and drives food producers in developing countries out of business.

Introducing Ethiopia

Ethiopia is in the horn of Africa. It has a varied landscape including cool highlands, temperate lowlands and hot deserts. Ethiopia has a population of over 67 million, 84% of whom live in rural areas. Over half of the Ethiopian population live on less than US$1 a day and over 80% of the population rely on agriculture for their livelihood.

Why are food and hunger a problem in Ethiopia?
Ethiopia has suffered from several famines, and many Ethiopians are chronically hungry. This is due to political, economic and environmental reasons.

The most commonly given reason for famine is drought, and parts of Ethiopia do have unpredictable rainfall that can lead to droughts. However, drought occurs frequently all over the world, and doesn't always to famine. Weather is only ever one of several factors causing famine or chronic hunger.

The main factor leading to famine in Ethiopia is poverty. Poor people do not have the resources to deal with shocks, and are more likely to be pushed into unsustainable ways of coping such as selling equipment, sending children out to work or eating less.

Unequal trading systems also contribute to hunger in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government purchase crops from farmers at low fixed prices. International organisations encourage Ethiopia to produce cash crops to export, which reduces the land available for growing crops. The world price for agricultural exports such as coffee is also very low.

Another factor contributing to hunger is the agricultural system. In Ethiopia, individuals do not own land, it is assigned according to the size of a family, and redistributed every few years. Every time land is redistributed it is divided between more people, so each farmer gets less. Lack of investment, and the need for large yields from a small area, leads to land degradation.

There have been frequent conflicts in Ethiopia. In the early 1990s, 60% of the national budget was being spent on war. Obviously this reduces the money available to improve agriculture or provide relief for hungry people.

About 7 million Ethiopians receive food aid each year but the giving of aid is highly political. Ethiopia is a socialist country, and in the past received aid from the USSR. During the 1985 famine it suffered because the USSR was no longer in a position to help, and Europe and the USA were reluctant to help a socialist country. When aid did finally arrive, the Ethiopian government did not distribute it to rebel areas.

Poor infrastructure in Ethiopia means that food distribution is a problem. At times there have been areas of Ethiopia which have had a surplus but it is difficult to get the food to those areas where it is needed.