In parts of this vast country, fields are dry and people are without food. But it's not like the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands died of starvation. Today, intervention efforts have led to success
By Don Cayo, Vancouver Sun May 5, 2012
Four years ago, when hardly anyone outside this region was even noticing the serious food crisis developing in the Horn of Africa, hunger was already stalking the dry valley floor just outside the boundaries of this southern Ethiopian town.
Cattle died. Husbands left their wives and boys left their fathers to try to find work in the towns. Whole families fled to new lives of urban poverty.
Today, the climate instability underlying the ever-present threat of famine has grown worse.
Rainfall is less and less predictable, and more and more likely to come at the wrong time. In many parts of this vast country of 83 million, fields grow only thistles, which at least slow soil erosion until - maybe - enough rain comes to make it worthwhile to plant something the people and their animals will be able to eat.
Yet on the outskirts of Kutcha today, hunger - that once-frequent visitor - is just a memory.
Despite hard times all around them, eating well has never been so easy for more than 200 families descended from the peasants who were coerced or forced to resettle here 30 years ago by the Derg, Ethiopia's hard-line Communist government of the day. What was then dense jungle, populated by dangerous predators and disease-bearing parasites, has been transformed into what is, by the standards of Ethiopia's challenging geography, a new Eden.
What happened to turn things around so completely?
The short answer is small-scale irrigation. A longer answer, which requires some context, is that food aid has done its magic in this little corner of a country where, in any given year, up to 20 million people - more than one citizen in every four - can't grow or buy enough to eat.
Food aid today involves much more than the old stereotype of throwing grain sacks from the back of trucks, explains Jim Cornelius, the Winnipeg-based head of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, who led a tour of five Canadian journalists to food-challenged areas of this chronically hungry land.
The most recent food aid program in this part of southern Ethiopia may be more dramatically successful than those in most other places, but how it unfolded is typical. It started four years ago as a government-sanctioned, Foodgrains Bank-funded, locally run make-work program that exchanges food - usually big sacks of maize - for labour on community projects.
A big gang of workers - in this case, 260 of them - were identified by their neighbours as members of the most needy families in the community. They were equipped with rudimentary tools and set to work diverting some of the flow from a nearby river to 65 hectares of flat, fertile land that had never been occupied because, without irrigation, it was too dry to farm.
The result?
In an area where once people grew only nourishing but not very lucrative maize - and in the drier years not much of that - they can now experiment with tasty new cash crops as diverse as peppers, beans, onions, and more.
Soon, when recent plantings mature, they'll also have bananas to truck to market - a big money-maker for those few who can grow them in this difficult climate.
Cattle died. Husbands left their wives and boys left their fathers to try to find work in the towns. Whole families fled to new lives of urban poverty.
Today, the climate instability underlying the ever-present threat of famine has grown worse.
Rainfall is less and less predictable, and more and more likely to come at the wrong time. In many parts of this vast country of 83 million, fields grow only thistles, which at least slow soil erosion until - maybe - enough rain comes to make it worthwhile to plant something the people and their animals will be able to eat.
Yet on the outskirts of Kutcha today, hunger - that once-frequent visitor - is just a memory.
Despite hard times all around them, eating well has never been so easy for more than 200 families descended from the peasants who were coerced or forced to resettle here 30 years ago by the Derg, Ethiopia's hard-line Communist government of the day. What was then dense jungle, populated by dangerous predators and disease-bearing parasites, has been transformed into what is, by the standards of Ethiopia's challenging geography, a new Eden.
What happened to turn things around so completely?
The short answer is small-scale irrigation. A longer answer, which requires some context, is that food aid has done its magic in this little corner of a country where, in any given year, up to 20 million people - more than one citizen in every four - can't grow or buy enough to eat.
Food aid today involves much more than the old stereotype of throwing grain sacks from the back of trucks, explains Jim Cornelius, the Winnipeg-based head of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, who led a tour of five Canadian journalists to food-challenged areas of this chronically hungry land.
The most recent food aid program in this part of southern Ethiopia may be more dramatically successful than those in most other places, but how it unfolded is typical. It started four years ago as a government-sanctioned, Foodgrains Bank-funded, locally run make-work program that exchanges food - usually big sacks of maize - for labour on community projects.
A big gang of workers - in this case, 260 of them - were identified by their neighbours as members of the most needy families in the community. They were equipped with rudimentary tools and set to work diverting some of the flow from a nearby river to 65 hectares of flat, fertile land that had never been occupied because, without irrigation, it was too dry to farm.
The result?
In an area where once people grew only nourishing but not very lucrative maize - and in the drier years not much of that - they can now experiment with tasty new cash crops as diverse as peppers, beans, onions, and more.
Soon, when recent plantings mature, they'll also have bananas to truck to market - a big money-maker for those few who can grow them in this difficult climate.
Already, a farmer named Abera has gone from one of the poorest in his community to the envy of his neighbours: he made 1,000 birr ($60) from one crop of peppers alone.
His combined earnings from this and his other irrigated crops have bought him a team of oxen as well as good food and new clothes for his family. He had 80 birr to spare to contribute to improvements at the community's school.
Most others who participated in the project have been just as successful - and just as generous in their support of the school, which is a priority for Ethiopian parents.
"We are tired of living on aid from others," said another farmer, named Philemon. "We want to live on our own production."
His combined earnings from this and his other irrigated crops have bought him a team of oxen as well as good food and new clothes for his family. He had 80 birr to spare to contribute to improvements at the community's school.
Most others who participated in the project have been just as successful - and just as generous in their support of the school, which is a priority for Ethiopian parents.
"We are tired of living on aid from others," said another farmer, named Philemon. "We want to live on our own production."
Read more:http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Hunger+hope+Ethiopia/6572140/story.html
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