The Environmental History of Africa

Topic 16 - Ethiopia's Agricultural Paradox

  1. Famine in Ethiopia: The Ethiopian Paradox:
    1. Ethiopia has suffered major famines in 1889-92, 1917-18, 1927, 1956, 1972-74, 1984, 1987.
    2. Two paradoxes:
      1. Most efficient agricultural. system of plow and endemic cereals and pulses, yet most common famines.
      2. Food production areas not cash crop areas most affected (famines are rural not urban).
    3. Sen thesis explains that rural people and subsistence food producers lack both forms of entitlement. Food is available but no claims on it.

  2. Ethiopia's history of famine follows this general world model. Major famines were reported over last 2000 years. We know little about them but we have accounts that lead us to believe that they resulted from drought, human and crop disease, locusts.
    1. Major 1889-92 famine (called Ya Kifu Qan or "Cruel Days") resulted from combination (Conjuncture) drought, cattle disease, cholera, and locusts. Scale was widespread and heavily reported. No international aid available.
    2. How did people cope? Used local wild foods, sought cattle from disease free areas, seed was hidden household by household, mechanisms of sharing (entitlements), from political leaders locally, children given as pawns, migration to disperse population. We do not know how famine was distributed across society by class, age, or gender.

  3. 1984-85 famine that sparked Live Aid and worldwide response had similar characteristics, but was a classic modern famine. We could understand causes and effects first hand because of new techologies of transport and communications. But 1984-85 famine also new phenomenon where envrionment was a trigger but not the cause. Why did people starve in some places in Ethiopia but not in others? Why did Ethiopians starve during a drought and not those in the American Midwest, which also experienced severe drought.
    1. Those who died were in rural area: i.e. cities had entitlements (What kind?)
    2. Those most vulnerable were women, children, and elderly? Why?
    3. Vulnerable concentrated in single areas.
    4. Migration was more possible but restricted by political control and warfare?
    5. Narratives of famine emphasized fault of African governments, farmers, bureaucrats.