Ensuring Food Security in Ethiopia

Ensuring Food security in dry land areas of Ethiopia:

polices, actors, and achievements

International Conference on Policies for Water and Food Security in Dry Areas24th to 26th of June, Cairo, Egypt

Dawit Alemu

Ethiopia

Content

1) Overview of Ethiopian Agricultural sector

2) Food security measures in dry land area of Ethiopia

• Overview of dry land areas in Ethiopia

• Key food security measures in dry land areas

3) Lessons Learned

4) Emerging issues and challenges

5) Main recommendations to policy-makers

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Overview of the Ethiopian agricultural sector

• Being the dominant sector, agriculture in Ethiopia contributes about 50% to overall GDP, generates 90% of export earnings and supplies about 70% of the country’s raw material to the secondary activities

• The production system is dominantly rain-fed with three major farming systems: (i) Cereal based mixed farming system, (ii) Cash crops based mixed farming system, and (iii) Pastoral and agro-pastoral farming systems

• Thirteen million smallholder farming households account for 90 percent of total production ,

• Dry land areas cover about 68% of the total land with an estimated population of about 35% of the country’s population, i.e. not less than 30 million people

• On average, five to seven million people are chronically food insecure every year

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Overview of the Ethiopian agricultural sector

• Taking into consider the extent of food insecurity in the country, the priority policy focus has been to Agriculture

• Specifically, Agriculture has been at the core of the GoE’s poverty reduction strategic documents:

• The Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP) approved in 2002,

• The 2004 Food Security Strategy (FSS),

• The 2006 Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), and

• The 2010 Growth and Transformation Plan – GTP

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Overview of the Ethiopian agricultural sector

• The national water policy and strategy provides the framework of addressing water supply and sanitation, irrigation and hydropower development in the country

• The food security strategy sets the scope and areas of intervention in helping chronically food insecure households to reach a level of food security necessary for an active and healthy life

• These policies are implemented in a decentralized governance and the key organizational structure includes federal , regional, zonal, and district levels

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Food security measures in dry land area of Ethiopia

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Overview of dry land areas in Ethiopia

• There are 18 major agro-ecological zones (AEZs), of which 8 are dry AEZs that are arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid regions;

• Dry land areas cover about 68% of the total land in the country;

• About 35% of the country’s population, i.e. not less than 30 million people;

• These areas support 28 percent of cattle, 66 percent of goats, 26 percent of sheep, and almost all camel population

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Overview of dry land areas …

• The main features of these dry land areas are rainfall is scarce, unreliable and concentrated during a short rainy season with the remaining period tending to be relatively or absolutely dry which adversely affects crop growth and development.

• Almost all food insecure households are found in the dry land areas of the country

• The areas that were affected during the mega drought periods in the country are all dry land areas In

tern

ation

al C

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Pol

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ood

Secu

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24-2

6 Ju

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airo

, Egy

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Overview of dry land areas …

Mega disaster period

Human lives lost

Affected areasNo of

affected people

1972-1974/75 100,000 Wello, North Shoa, Tigray, Afar, Kangra provinces

3,000,000

1983/84 300,000 Wollo, Gondar, Tigray, Shoa, Harerghe, Sidamo

7,750,000

1987 367 Ogaden, Tigray, Wello, Shewa, Gamo Gofa, Sidamo, Gondar, and Bale

7,000,000

1999/00 0 North Wello, East Hararge zones, South Oromiya

4,900,000

2003/04 0 Tigray, Oromiya, Amhara, Somali, Afar regions

13,200,000

2005/06 0 Afder, Liben, Gode zones, Somali region, Borena zone, Oromiya region

2,600,000

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Mega drought periods by affected areas

Key food security measures in dry land areas

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• The key interventions to ensure food secuirty in dry land areas can be categorized in five:

1) Strengthening Agricultural Research for Dry land Areas

2) Agricultural extension (crop, livestock and natural resources)

3) Natural resource, water management and irrigation

4) Commercialization and Agricultural marketing for both inputs and outputs

5) Food security specific interventions in dry land areas

Strengthening Agricultural Research for Dry land Areas

• There are six federal agricultural research centers and 16 regional agricultural/pastoral research centers in the dry land areas of the country.

• The key research priority areas are

• drought tolerance,

• heat tolerance

• disease and pest management

• soil and water management including irrigation agronomy

• farm mechanization,

• socioeconomics and research-extension.

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Strengthening Agricultural Research …

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Agricultural extension in dry land areas

• The main contents of the extension programs in the dry land areas are related to:

• Water and natural resource rehabilitation and conservation, and

• Livestock management in pastoral areas

• The extension program for dry land areas differentiates the interventions for:

• Drought-prone and moisture stress areas and

• Pastoral areas

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Agricultural extension …

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No RegionNo of

KebelesConstructed

FTC

FTCs with

require facilities

FTCs that are

proving training

FTCs with

demo sites

FTCs to be constructed

No of DAs

1. Tigray 683 629 183 187 182 23422. Amhara 3196 2627 1682 207 1935 489 9172

3. Oromiya 6447 4164 3030 1529 19120

4. SNNPR 3760 2556 1614 1080 2828 273 115325. BG 474 219 100 127 50 17486. Gambella 229 41 32 22 44 15407. Afar 339 51 16 11 20 7488. Somali -- 113 12 12699. Harari 17 6 5 5 6 3510. Dire

Dawa 38 12 5 12 12 120

11. Addis Ababa 56

Ethiopia 10,418 6,679 3,180 5,077 762 47,682

Natural resource, water management and irrigation

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• the country is one of the Sub-Saharan African countries most seriously affected by land degradation

• highly associated with soil, vegetation, biodiversity, water, climate degradation, and land conversion

• About 85% of the country’s land surface is considered prone to moderate, to very severe for land degradation

• Accordingly,

• 30,000 ha are lost annually due to water erosion, with over 2 million ha already severely damaged;

• 1.5 billion tons of topsoil is lost each year from soil erosion;

• Annual soil nutrient losses are equivalent to 30 kg/ha of Nitrogen and 15-20 kg/ha of Phosphorus;

• 4,000 ha of irrigated land has been lost due to severe salinization; and

• 62,000 ha of forest and woodland are cleared annually.

Natural resource, water management and irrigation …

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• In response to these challenges, the country has developed a Strategic Investment Framework for Sustainable Land Management – SIFSLM

• Planned to be implemented in three phases, over a fifteen year period • phase 1: 2009 – 2013, • Phase 2: 2014 – 2018, and• Phase 3: 2019 – 2023

• The main interventions are related to community-based watershed management and participatory development of water resources for irrigation and/or fisheries

Natural resource, water management and irrigation…

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Region Total Vegetable Cereals Spices Pulses FruitsNo of

beneficiariesOromiya 568,475 288,951 54,097 180,470 30,938 14,019 1,193,023 Amhara 528,182 287,124 129,250 28,382 7,201 76,225 1,642,880 Tigray 181,769 91,837 27,493 5,238 33,418 23,782 462,608

SNNPR 125,244 50,626 13,784 35,824 20,175 4,836 728,210 1,403,670 718,538 224,624 249,915 91,732 118,862 4,026,721

Target areas 2010/11 2011/12National water supply coverage 52.12 58.25Rural water supply coverage 48.85 55.21Urban water supply coverage 74.64 78.71Reducing non-functional water supply schemes 25.5 24

Cultivated Area under small-scale irrigation in ha, 2011/12

Access to Potable water supply in percentage

19,289 watersheds reclaimed and rehabilitated through Integrated watershed interventions

Commercialization and Agricultural marketing

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• This is highly linked with national extension system along with the development of national agricultural marketing system

• The key areas of investment in the agricultural marketing that are linked with improved commercialization of farmers are

• Improved access to road especially through the huge expansion of rural roads,

• Improved access to telecommunication services,

• Improved warehousing,

• Development of market centres like ECX for major commodities, and rural market centres for livestock, grains and coffee all over the country, and

• Improved rural electrification

Commercialization and Agricultural marketing …

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• In terms of improving access to road, the federal and regional total road length has increased from 53,143 in 2010/11 to 56,190 in 2011/12

• In terms of access to telecommunication services, the coverage of wireless telephone service increased to 90 percent in 2011/12. This is highly associated with access to market information that a key input for market efficiency

• Access to electricity is considered an important factor for and the national electric service coverage has reached at 48.5 per cent in 2011/12. The GTP target is to increase the national electricity service coverage to 75 percent by 2015.

Food security specific interventions

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• Food security specific programs are put in place in areas were there is severe food security problem

• The main programs are:

• Agricultural Growth Programme (AGP);

• Sustainable Land Management Programme (SLMP);

• Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP);

• Households' Asset Building Programme (HAB);

• Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Program (DRMFS).

• Settlement program

• This is also a move recently to add a national program on livestock and pastoral livelihood to ensure a more focused intervention

Food security specific interventions …

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• This programs have been instrumental to ensuring food security in drought prone areas and improving resilience through long term investments in natural resource reclamation

• These programs have considerably contributed in major food insecure areas in terms of:

• reducing household food insecurity;

• raising consumption levels;

• encouraging households to engage in production and investment through enhanced access to credit,

• increasing use of modern farming techniques, and

• entry into nonfarm own business activities;

• leading to sustained asset accumulation, and

• No loss of human lives

Lessons Learned• The key lessons are related with:

• The need to promote integrated approach at • National level• Community level, and • Household level

• Addressing the priority problem – Land and natural resource degradation, which is the main cause of water and food insecurity in the country

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Lessons Learned …• The need to promote integrated approach at all levels

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Agricultural Research

Agricultural Extension

Natural resource, water management and irrigation

Commercialization and agricultural Marketing

Food security specific programs

Rural InfrastructureRural Infrastructure

Non-agricultural rural developm

ent activities

Non-agricultural rural developm

ent activities

Improved governance for rural

development

Improved governance for rural

development

Agro-ecology based rural developm

entAgro-ecology based rural

development

Integrated Rural Development

Lessons Learned• The need to promote integrated interventions at community

level in dry land areas (Watershed approach)

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1

2

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Lessons Learned• The need to promote integrated interventions at household

level in dry land areas

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Emerging issues and challenges

• The key challenges for improved performance are related to

• The continuous challenges of the effects of climate change (drought, flood, disease and pest etc),

• The challenges in establishing effective technology multiplication and delivery mechanism in dry land areas due to the associated high risks

• The limited agricultural technology uptake in dry land areas,

• The nature of long period requirement for benefits and the huge initial cost of reclamation of natural resources, and

• Lack of adequate human power with expertise.

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Main recommendations to policy-makers

• Further strengthening integrated approach at all levels (national, regional, community and household levels)

• Strengthening agricultural research in dry land areas (esp water –crop-livestock integration)

• Improve the agricultural technology delivery mechanisms

• Strengthening the natural resource reclamation and conservation along with the watershed principle

• Strengthen the human and institutional capacity to address the challenges of dry land areas

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Thanks for listening Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome