Agriculture in Ethiopia

Ethiopia's agriculture is plagued by periodic drought, soil degradation[1] caused by overgrazing, deforestation, high levels of taxation and poor infrastructure (making it difficult and expensive to get goods to market).

[7] Ethiopia has great agricultural potential because of its vast areas of fertile land, diverse climate, generally adequate rainfall, and large labor pool.

[8] Historically, Ethiopia was a rare exception in Sub-Saharan Africa, because of its special environmental circumstances, that enabled Ethiopian farmers to increase their productivity, for example by using ploughs.

Regular and reliable harvests helped generate stable tax income that led to relatively strong governmental structures that were ultimately the reason that Ethiopia was the only country not to be colonized in the late-nineteenth century ‘Scramble for Africa’ apart from Liberia.

Moreover, the emperor's inability to implement meaningful land reform perpetuated a system in which aristocrats and the church owned most of the farmland and in which most farmers were tenants who had to provide as much as 50% of their crops as rent.

The MPP included credit for the purchase of items such as fertilizers, improved seeds, and pesticides; innovative extension services; the establishment of cooperatives; and the provision of infrastructure, mainly water supply and all-weather roads.

The program later facilitated the establishment of similar internationally supported and financed projects at Ada'a Chukala (just south of Addis Ababa), Welamo, and Humera.

The poor performance of agriculture was related to several factors, including drought; a government policy of controlling prices and the free movement of agricultural products from surplus to deficit areas; the unstable political climate; the dislocation of the rural community caused by resettlement, villagization, and conscription of young farmers to meet military obligations; land tenure difficulties and the problem of land fragmentation; the lack of resources such as farm equipment, better seeds, and fertilizers; and the overall low level of technology.

[8] President Mengistu's 1990 decision to allow free movement of goods, to lift price controls, and to provide farmers with security of tenure was designed to reverse the decline in Ethiopia's agricultural sector.

[8] Inaccessibility, water shortages, and infestations of disease-causing insects, mainly mosquitoes, prevented the use of large parcels of potentially productive land.

The first, found in areas with relatively good drainage, consists of red-to-reddish-brown clayey loams that hold moisture and are well endowed with needed minerals, with the exception of phosphorus.

Over the centuries, deforestation, overgrazing, and practices such as cultivation of slopes not suited to agriculture have eroded the soil, a situation that worsened considerably during the 1970s and 1980s, especially in Eritrea, Tigray, and parts of Gondar and Wollo.

The existence of so many land tenure systems, coupled with the lack of reliable data, made it difficult to give a comprehensive assessment of landownership in Ethiopia, as well as depressed the ability of peasants to improve themselves.

[8] In 1984 the founding congress of the Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE) emphasized the need for a coordinated strategy based on socialist principles to accelerate agricultural development.

To implement this strategy, the government relied on peasant associations and rural development, cooperatives and state farms, resettlement and villagization, increased food production, and a new marketing policy.

After the 1975 land reform, peasants began withholding grain from the market to drive up prices because government price-control measures had created shortages of consumer items.

Mengistu and his advisers believed that state farms would produce grain for urban areas, raw materials for domestic industry, and also increase production of cash crops such as coffee to generate badly needed foreign exchange.

[8] The effect of the Derg's land reform program on food production and its marketing and distribution policies were among two of the major controversies surrounding the revolution.

This includes: bolstering smallholder farmers’ productivity, enhancing marketing systems, upgrading participation of private sector, increasing volume of irrigated land and curtailing amount of households with inadequate food.

As a result, a number of Indian entrepreneurs are relocating to Ethiopia to develop its thriving flower industry which has led to gains in market share at the expense of neighboring countries.

[19] Another new source for export revenue is the production of chat, an amphetamine-like stimulant which is consumed both inside Ethiopia and in adjacent countries, and which is considered a drug of abuse that can lead to mild to moderate psychological dependence.

Teff, indigenous to Ethiopia, furnishes the flour for enjera, an sourdough pancake-like bread that is the principal form in which grain is consumed in the highlands and in urban centers throughout the country.

[8] Ethiopia's demand for grain continued to increase because of population pressures, while supply remained short, largely because of drought and government agricultural policies, such as price controls, which adversely affected crop production.

[8] major pulse crops grown in the country are chickpea, haricot beans, lentils, fababean and peas The Ethiopian Orthodox Church traditionally has forbidden consumption of animal fats on many days of the year.

Most oilseeds are raised by small-scale farmers, but sesame was also grown by large-scale commercial farms before the era of land reform and the nationalization of agribusiness.

Resembling the banana but bearing an inedible fruit, the plant produces large quantities of starch in its underground rhizome and an above-ground stem that can reach a height of several meters.

Prior to the Revolution, urbanization increased the demand for fruit, leading to the establishment of citrus orchards in areas with access to irrigation in Shewa, Arsi, Hararghe, and Eritrea.

Almost the entire rural population was involved in some way with animal husbandry, whose role included the provision of draft power, food, cash, transportation, fuel, and, especially in pastoral areas, social prestige.

Though the raising of livestock always has been largely a subsistence activity,[25] intensive, factory farm facilities are gaining in popularity and are present in Addis Ababa and Debre Zeit, run by Ethiopian agribusiness ELFORA.

[8] While efforts are being made to intensify and industrialize the sector, questions arise as to how Ethiopia can develop and expand its livestock population when Ethiopians already struggle to gain access to good soil, grazing land, and water.