ONE CANNOT MAKE THE DONKEY MOVE BY BEATING THE LOAD
Mesfin Wolde-Mariam
July 2003

Breaking the Cycle of Recurrent Famine in Ethiopia
Christian Aid and Christian Relief and Development Agency
At Economic Commission for Africa


1. INTRODUCTION

Famine is an ugly sight. I wonder how many persons here have

actually seen famine, and experienced a little of famine. It is my
encounter with famine in 1958-59 in Tigray and the subsequent
nightmare that I could not get rid of that literally forced me to
study famine for a total of more than ten years. I want you all to
feel what I feel, the dehumanizing experience of famine, the
degradation and the impotence in face of such terrifying atmosphere
of death: what you see is death; what you hear is death; what you
smell is death. Ugly death. It is a terrifying sight where there is
hardly any distinction between those that are already dead and those
that are gasping their last breath.

My definition of famine is very precise. It is the following:

Famine is the most negative state of food consumption under which
people, unable to replace even the energy they lose in basal
metabolism, consume whatever is stored in their bodies; that means
they literally consume themselves to death.
This is the worst type of death. We are brought up with high-flown
social and religious values. They all disappear under the slow,
persistent and grinding death by famine. They are replaced by a sense
of abandonment, abandonment even by God, of helplessness and
hopelessness. A famine situation is a condition under which a mother
cannot help her emaciated and tormented baby, which only becomes an
additional source of torment for her. Can we afford to be less than
absolutely honest on such an issue?
I want to impress upon you all that you are dealing with the
gravest human problem facing this country for over forty years. The
subject demands the highest intellectual honesty, the highest moral
rectitude and the most determined human commitment and social
responsibility.

In 1984, I had written:

The fact that famine, as the most extreme form of
malnutrition, stunts the physical and mental development of children
does not seem debatable. The effect of famine on children must be
understood not only in its interference in the normal biological
process of growth and development, but also in terms of the
psychological scars that it is bound to leave on their minds.
These facts lead us into a realm of speculation. All other
things remaining equal, will surviving famine victims develop a
production capacity that will enable them to live a life that is free
from famine? Or will they become even more vulnerable to famine?

Today, almost twenty years later, I can answer my questions with
confidence. All other things remaining equal, the situation will be
much worse ten years later. All other things remaining equal
population pressure alone will have devastating consequences. Self-
defeating policies will only accelerate the process.

THE PROBLEM

An Ethiopian saying has it that one who is afraid of beating
the donkey beats the load instead. That will certainly not have much
effect in moving the donkey. In this case it is climate and weather
with occasional encounter with conservation that has lost distinction
between ends and means that constitutes the load. The numerous
conferences and workshops that have taken place, the innumerable
papers that have been presented by various persons, and the enormous
amount of money spent on such conferences and workshops during the
last thirty years have not made the slightest dent on those who have
the power to solve the problem of Ethiopian famine for good. The
problem is not lack of knowledge in understanding the problem of
famine, nor in devising solutions for it, but lack of will. What is
it that is so mysterious about famine in Ethiopia? Famine is a very
serious matter that kills hundreds of peasants in local famines in
one part of the country or another every year; thousands of peasants
in regional famines; and hundreds of thousands of peasants in
national famines like the one we have now. If life means anything to
us the problem is urgent, so urgent that there is no time for talking.
· We know that it is subsistence producers that are vulnerable
to famine;
· we know that vulnerability is caused by persistent oppression
and exploitation of peasants;
· we know that most of the production of peasants has to turn
into cash to meet the pressing demands of the state and competing
petty officials;
· we know that peasants go through severe periods of hunger
even at normal years;
· we know that as a result of all this, peasants have no
savings of any kind, cash or grain;
· we know that these are acts of deliberate commission on the
part of the state forces;
· we also know that after a crop failure a period of about six
to nine months passes before famine turns into a mass killer: this is
the result of an act of omission on the part of the state forces.
These facts are very well known, but those in power certainly do not
recognize them. I think it is the moral obligation of all conscious
Ethiopians to ask:
· How many years of famine do we need to understand the problem?
· How many millions of peasants must die before we recognize
the cause, the donkey that we must hold responsible?
· Are we so insensitive and, perhaps worse, that we have failed
to even realize that we have almost officially declared both
Ethiopian famine and relief assistance as the responsibility of the
international community?
· How many conferences and workshops will it take to convince
ourselves and those in power that the real causes of famine are not
drought and other adverse natural conditions?

4. VULNERABILITY TO FAMINE

I consider the concept of vulnerability to famine to be my
best contribution to the study of famine. Vulnerability is the most
critical factor for the proper understanding famine. What do we mean
by vulnerability to famine? Drought occurs in various parts of the
world and yet we do not hear of any famine in those places. China was
once considered to be the land of famine. India, too, until recently
was plagued by famine. Yet, today neither China nor India experiences
famine.

Obviously, the natural conditions have not changed so
radically to favour those countries. It is the socio?economic
conditions that have changed and removed vulnerability to famine. The
essential conditions for vulnerability to famine are the following:
· Peasants and pastoralists with very low production capacity;
· Peasants and pastoralists that rarely, if at all, engage in
market transactions on their own behalf;
· Peasants and pastoralists that have almost no savings in
grain or cash;
· Peasants and pastoralists that even under normal conditions
have very little or nothing to eat in the four to five months
immediately preceding harvest. In fact there are two distinct hungry
seasons: the post-harvest hungry season and the pre-harvest hungry
season.

The socio-economic and political forces create vulnerability
to famine. These forces are of two types. One set of forces manifests
itself in its "inexorable claims" on the produce of the peasants,
some of which are the following:

· The state demands taxes.
· Various associations demand their dues.
· Religious institutions demand their share.
· Local officials demand various contributions.
· Debts have to be paid with exorbitant interest.
· Even the dead demand some tribute.
· Over and above these claims there are all sorts of illegal
extortions by petty local officials.

The other set of forces manifests itself in the market, in
the transactions that peasants are forced to conduct. They are forced
to take their produce to the market at harvest time, when prices for
agricultural products are at their lowest, in order to pay taxes and
various other obligations.

· Very low prices for the products of peasants.
· Very high price when the peasants themselves are forced to
buy their own products back.
· Very high price for various non?farm products such as salt,
oil, kerosine, clothing and shoes, soap as well as various
agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides and
impliments.

It is these sets of forces acting in concert that create the
conditions for peasant vulnerability to famine. Without these
conditions there cannot be vulnerability to famine, and without
vulnerability to famine there cannot be famine. It should be clear
that in reality vulnerability to famine is a condition of periodic
starvation.

The essence of vulnerability to famine is the undermining of
the peasants' capacity to save some food or cash for bad times.
Peasants are effectively incapacitated by the two sets of forces
described above. Where there is vulnerability to famine all the
state, administrative and market forces conspire to incapacitate the
productive and saving capacities of the peasants.
All cash claimants from the peasants arrive at the rural
scene at harvest time. All peasants are forced to take their produce
to the market at about the same time. This flooding the market with
food products causes prices to fall considerably. As a result
peasants have to sell more of their produce to meet the various cash
demands imposed on them.

Two points need to be stressed in connection with the cash
demands imposed on the peasants. First, the externally imposed cash
demands have priority over the subsistence requirements of the
peasants and their families. Peasants have to pay their cash
obligations to the various claimants before their own subsistence
needs are met. Peasants and their families have to subsist with what
is left after they have met the cash demands imposed on them by the
various forces. What is left with them is hardly sufficient to meet
their subsistence requirements for six to eight months. Even in these
months there is already widespread undernourishment and malnutrition.
The following four to six months, however, are worse, depending on
the region. These four to six months constitute the period that is
often referred to as the pre-harvest hunger.

During this pre-harvest period most peasants have hardly
anything to eat and they are under severe starvation. Consequently,
they are often forced to borrow cash or grain at very high interest
rates. It is a period of extreme hardship. Such peasant societies are
vulnerable to famine. In normal years with all the bounty of nature
peasants live constantly on the brink of famine. It is living on the
brink of famine in normal years when the natural forces are
favourable to the peasants that we refer to as vulnerability to
famine.

Second, the fact that the externally imposed cash demands on
the peasants come together at a particular time of the year, the
harvest, acts as a double?edged sword on the peasants' productive and
saving capacity. It reduces the amount of money they get per unit of
weight of their produce and forces them to surrender more of their
produce for less. This condition ensures the exploitation of the
peasants by external forces. Or as the Japanese proverb had it in the
past it helps to keep the peasants between life and death. This
ruthless exploitation of the peasants without due regard even to
their subsistence needs is the other aspect of their vulnerability to
famine. No regime that calls itself "government" so far has
recognized the reality of peasants' life and instituted tax immunity
for subsistence producers.

3. ETHIOPIAN PEASANTS

The dilemma of the Ethiopian peasant is, on one hand, to
surrender to the necessity of making a living ONLY ON THE LAND by
force of circumstances, and on the other, to submit to the demands
made on him by the ruling forces. In other words, the peasant has no
choice over his predicament as a peasant. Nor does he have any choice
on the actions of his tormentors.

Ethiopian peasants constitute some 85 % of the total population of the country. Their numbers, however, have never had any
significance in terms of power and influence. This fact must be
included as one of the most important aspects of the problem of
famine in Ethiopia and its increasing frequency and magnitude.
The most important problem is the fact that policy makers
refuse to accept their role in generating famine. If this fact is not
accepted seriously and sincerely no amount of muddling through with
the assistance of international organizations will solve the problem
of famine. It will only intensify it. It is sad to realize that
Ethiopian officials shamelessly blame international agencies and
other governments for not providing assistance in time while they
refuse to accept the responsibility for generating the famine in the
first place.

Drought or too much rain, frostbite or hailstones, locusts or
armyworms, or any other natural force that reduces the production of
crops can be foreseen. How many years of famine do we need, and how
many millions of peasants must die before the policy makers are
prepared to develop such foresight? Without that foresight there is
no technology yet to prevent drought, nor too much rain, nor
hailstones. It is only that foresight that can prevent famine. It is
that lack of foresight that stands between the problem of famine and
its solution.

Barren explanations of famine are generated to obscure the
understanding of famine and to postpone its solution, on one hand,
and to foster the business of relief, on the other. Some of these
explanations are seemingly moral and generous while others are
academic and technical. One debates whether colonialism and
exploitation by the West are not the REAL causes of famine. One
debates whether it is morally right to feed cats and dogs, and even
horses and pigs in the West while human beings are starving to death
in Ethiopia. One debates whether the production of agricultural raw
materials in demand in the international market are not taking such a
considerable proportion of the cultivated land which should have been
under food crops instead. One debates whether land degradation
brought about by the "ignorant" peasants in cultivating the land is
not the main problem of food shortage. One debates whether the cause
of famine is shortage of food supply or whether the real cause is the
failure to command effective demand, or as some see it a combination
of both. It is that simple. In so far as Ethiopia is concerned these
are barren debates.

The crucial point is that these confused and confusing
explanations of famine whether they are openly paternalistic or
seemingly academic have one thing in common: They raise their own
world to the level of humanity with all the sense of responsibility
and goodness that it entails and lower the victims to mere objects of
pity at worse and of charity at best. Very few of these explanations
of famine charge the societies and governments with the
responsibility for allowing famine to occur. If they had any respect
for us as responsible human beings they would be blasting us in the
strongest terms possible. The reason for the fact that they do not is
I think because we are not even worthy of their contempt. Menghistu's
so-called communist regime got much more devastating criticism.
Barren explanations of famine lead us to no solutions. On the
contrary, they reinforce the confusion about famine and its origin.
Worse than that they provide a rather uncomfortable cushion to our
guilty consciences and reduce the sense of responsibility that must
necessarily be the foundation of the solution of the problem of
famine. Not FAO or WFP nor the whole of the United Nations system can
solve the problem of famine for Ethiopia before Ethiopia itself has
identified the problem correctly.

If we have the will and the commitment, we do have the
capacity to resolve our chronic problem of food shortage. But whether
we do really have the will and the commitment that extends beyond
rhetoric I cannot in good conscience say. But it is high time that we
stop blaming nature for our obvious failures to adjust to her
vicissitudes and to harness her might. We have now gone a step
further in blaming nature; the whole of our electricity supply is in
jeopardy, not because we lacked foresight, as the regime wants us to
believe, but because nature was harsh on us. The processes of nature
do not operate with a motive of any kind. Nature simply is. It is
society that ought to adjust and act purposefully and responsibly. We
cannot say nature ought to be this or that. Nature responds neither
to threats and slogans nor to prayers and supplications. It responds
only to rational and effective SOCIAL ACTION.

5. CONCLUSION

In 1986, at conference on Food Security in Alemaya University I
concluded my paper with the following words, which are still true
today.

"For the vast majority of the rural population of Ethiopia the
problem of food security is a very pressing one, and for them,
therefore, the future begins now. It is our present action that will
determine whether the future will be a repetition of the recent past
or a total departure from it.

The issues constituting and surrounding the problem of food
security may appear complex and intractable, but they are manageable
and soluble. We need only the will at the level of policy, a more
assertive and a more committed role at the level of the professional
and a more free and a more decisive participation at the level of the
peasantry."

The problem of land tenure and security remains an issue today as it
was under the previous regime. The doubtful political benefits of the
land tenure exact an enormous price in social, economic and political
development. Those who pride themselves in holding revealed
revolutionary truth must now face the painful reality of mass death
by starvation, mass dislocations from various parts of the country,
and the effects of relief food assistance on national morale.
There is an urgent need for seriously reviewing the
conception of development that policy makers hold.

I will mention only four issues that I consider to be central to overcoming famine.
First, there is the nagging and perennial issue of land tenure into
which I will not go except to say that it is idle to expect
agricultural development with such a land policy. Second, there is an
urgent need for moratorium on taxation and various other
contributions for small peasant producers. This is absolutely
necessary. Third, the rhetoric and the effort to bring about
modernization and development with minuscule peasant farms that are
often less than one hectare and often fragmented, is a waste of
energy and resources. Fourth, essentially development will come not
by maintaining the present proportion of peasant population or by
increasing it, but, on the contrary, by decreasing that proportion.
With sound social and economic policies, Ethiopia has the
potential to become a very important exporter of agricultural
products. Those who talk of scarcity of resources do not know what
they are talking about.

To set the historical perspective right and as a matter of courtesy,
let me first mention an American pioneer in the area of food
security. His name is John L. Fischer, I think he was an agricultural
economist. In 1967 he studied the problem of food shortage. He
estimated the population of the country to be 28 million by 1972.
Assuming a minimum of 2300 calories per capita per day, he calculated
that agricultural production should increase at an average of 4.4%
per year. Then he says: "this is more than 200% of the rate by which
total food production has been increasing in recent years. To achieve
such a rate of growth is possible; but short of superior effort by
Ethiopia – improbable."

Of course, the superior effort was not made, and we know what
happened in 1973, a major national famine.
More recently, I have notes from newspapers Sene 8, 1989
Tobia Food shortages in
· southern Tigray
· Wello
· north Shewa
· Harer
· the south -- death by starvation
· Afar -- death by starvation
· Ogaden -- "" ''
Quoting Addis Zemen
Megabit 19, 1989 --
(a) Megabit 23, 1989 -- the south 2 Zones and north Omo receiving
relief assistance
(b) Ghinbot 7,1989 -- north Omo 255,000 peresons under stress, 60,000
quintals of grain allocated, but only 37,000 distributed. The rest in
store because of difficulties of transport -- bad roads and bridges
(c) Ghinbot 15, 1989 -- food shortages in Belesa And Ibinnat of south
Gonder
(d) Ghinbot 30, 1989 -- food shortage in 13 weredas in south wello,
256,000 persons in need where 58,000 quintals of grain was
distributed in form of food for work. The number of the needy may
eventually reach 350,000. Also in north Shewa Zone in three weredas
more than 140 persons in need, considerable damage on livestock. Some
6,315 quintals of grain distributed in form of food for work.
Moreover, in western Shewa, in Dendi wereda shortage of the summer
rains last year and shortage of belg rains this year, more than 4700
livestock have perished.
Causes
Shortage of rainfall
Pests -- army worms
Birds -- ghirrisa -- during last harvest -- AZ(a)
Floods -- " " " -- AZ(a)
Crop diseases -- " " " -- AZ(a)
shortage of belg rains -- last year and this year -- AZ(d)
Consequences
Grain prices rising
livestock are being sold in large numbers and cheaply

Reporter, Sene 9, 1989
North Shewa -- Ghishe, Gheramidir, Qeya, Mammamidir -- due
consecutive years of shortage of

rain -- people have already started
emigrating to other parts -- prices of livestock have fallen sharply
because peasants are selling in large numbers.