Agriculture and hunger in Ethiopia

By Brandi Moran: For my world hunger class I did my case study on Ethiopia and the problems they face with agriculture and hunger issues. I thought i would share some of the interesting facts that i found. · Ethiopia is located in eastern Africa in the southern red Sea Region.

  • Ethiopia borders Sudan on the west, Eritrea on the north, Djibouti and Somalia on the east and Kenya on the south. · Ethiopia is prone to droughts.
  • Precipitation is determined by differences in elevation and by seasonal shifts in monsoon winds the highlands receive by far the most rainfall, most of it between mid-June and mid-September.
  • Ethiopia is ranked among Africa and the world’s poorest nations. Ethiopia has a population of 77 million and 1.36 million people are in need of emergency food assistance.
  • Ethiopia has a chronic food in security and is vulnerable to acute food insecurity, primarily caused by drought, environmental degradation and low access to availability of food.
  • Poverty is widespread, with slightly less than half the population living below the basic needs poverty line.
  • The health care system is wholly inadequate, even in view of improvements in recent years.
  • The poverty-stricken economy is based on agriculture, accounting for almost half of GDP 60% of exports, and 80% of total employment.
  • Ethiopia is the home to an estimated 7 million pastoralists who tend a large number of livestock.
  • The government has announced plans to boost both grain and livestock production in an effort to address the problem of chronic food shortages
  • Coffee is critical to the Ethiopian economy with exports of some $350 million in 2006, but historically low prices have seen many farmers switching to qat to supplement income
  • The Ethiopian Highlands Reclamation Study (EHS) of the 1980’s revealed that the rate of land degradation poses a huge threat to the country’s future food security and general economic development.
  • The second issue that will need to be resolved to further the luck of agriculture production is the inability to transmit improved technology and farming practices into producers in participatory and accountable ways.

More pages