Lest anyone think we are having a sightseeing and rock-climbing vacation over here, I thought I'd share a little bit about the work our team is doing in Ethiopia.
For the past several years, USAID has funded an emergency food assistance program in Ethiopia. Food security is a big issue here - there are millions of people in this country who have been identified as chronically food insecure - meaning they never have enough to eat. With 85% of the country's population of 80+ million people living in rural areas, most people rely on agricultural or pastoralist activities for subsistence and, if they're lucky, moderate income. People in the western part of the country enjoy greater food security due to more stable and productive crops, rainfall and natural resources. In the central and eastern parts of the country, however, the majority of the population outside of (and even within) major cities ekes out a living by whatever means they can - normally farming about one hectare of land and raising small herds of goats, sheep or cattle.
Farming is tough work here - people still use a pair of oxen and a crude wood and metal plow to till the earth. The land is unforgiving - in most parts, rocky and dry and relatively inhospitable. Ethiopia's topography does nothing to help - everywhere we visit is characterized by massive hillsides, challenging to farm and subject to major flooding and erosion. Every year, families struggle with the weather and the degraded quality of small tracts of land they don't even own. Overfarming, poor natural resource management, poor quality and lack of availability of seeds and other vital farming inputs mean that many of Ethiopia's rural farmers struggle to produce sufficient quantities of food to meet their family's food needs for the entire year. As the months from harvest time stretch on - and the shocks of flood or drought compromise yet another harvest - families find themselves without resources to provide for the most basic of needs.
Relying on the Government of Ethiopia's crop and livestock surveillance systems, USAID provides emergency food to acutely food insecure families - those who need some extra help for 3-9 months out of the year. A typical food ration per person per month includes 15 kilos of cereals (wheat or sorghum), 1.5 kilos of pulses (usually yellow split peas), and 0.5 liter of vegetable oil. 35% of beneficiaries also receive 4.5 kilos of corn-soy blend, a fortified food product directed at children under five and pregnant/lactating women, the most nutritionally vulnerable groups.
With this system in mind - providing assistance to more than 1.6 million beneficiaries per year - we are aiming to answer the following questions:
1. What is the system for targeting food aid beneficiaries? How are they selected? Are they getting enough food to meet their needs?
2. How are families and communities utilizing the food they receive? Are they sharing it? Selling it?
3. How are selected individuals targeted for corn-soy blend?
4. What do individuals and communities know about what corn-soy blend is, who it's for, and how it should be used? How are they using it? Are they sharing it? Selling it? Do they need more information about it?
5. Are people being required to work in exchange for the food rations they receive? What is the system?
To answer these questions, we're visiting 6 different areas throughout the country - two communities in each area. There, we conduct interviews and hold focus group discussions to learn about local attitudes and practices, as well as meeting with local government officials to get their impressions of the situation. We're meeting with about 120 people every week to talk about the above issues. At the end, we've been told by our USAID supervisor, we'll be "the US government's best informed people on food aid in Ethiopia."
We're finding a lot. Due to some sensitivities around food security issues in the country I'll wait to share those until I get back to the US. Ultimately, the food USAID distributes is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Initiatives like the US government Feed The Future program - which focuses on increasing the capacity of local agricultural systems to provide local solutions to food insecurity - have incredible promise for long-term solutions to these problems. As we can see in the current crisis in this region, ensuring that local systems are in place to deal with natural disasters and shocks like droughts and floods, and to provide emergency food aid when needed, help to keep people alive. The Ethiopian Government has a pretty strong system in place to meet these needs when they arise - keeping them more resilient to the country's famines of the 1980s and 90s and the current crisis in Somalia, now bleeding over into Kenya and Ethiopia. They have done a lot to avoid these situations and learned from past tragedies. Hopefully the international community can help to strengthen these mechanisms in Ethiopia's neighbors.
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