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The destruction of agricultural production and Ethiopian peasant life: what happened twenty years ago.
In Chapter X, the “Conclusions” to their book Politics and the Ethiopian Famine 1984–1985 (Cultural Survival Inc., 1986), Jason W. Clay and Bonnie K. Holcomb wrote that “The government of Ethiopia is establishing a social and economic system that will produce starving people for generations to come”. The text of this final chapter is reproduced below.
Chapter X: Conclusions
The bulk of this report consists of the findings of our research conducted among refugees in Sudan. As necessary, preliminary interpretation has been interspersed throughout the report, and to an extent has shaped the discussion of the findings. This chapter presents in summary the conclusions drawn from the results of our investigation…
Dimensions of the Famine
Since 1977 there has been an overall decline in the standard of living of peasants in government-held areas in the three regions where we conducted our research: Tigray; Wollo; and Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa. This decline has been a direct consequence of specific government programs that adversely affected food production, which has decreased by as much as one-half to two-thirds since the Dergue implemented its agrarian reform program and other policies. The effects of these policies began to be felt in rural areas as early as 1977 and 1978. Producers from many areas insist that in addition to the decline in total production, the amount of produce the government takes is equivalent to or greater than what the landlords took during the previous government. In short, producers report having less food after harvests than they or their fathers had before the current government came to power.
By the 1984 agricultural year, extreme food shortages existed in the home regions of all refugees interviewed for this study, i.e., in the administrative regions of Tigray, Wollo, Show, Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa.
Causes of Hunger and Famine
The crisis of 1984-85 was the result of a combination of long- and short-term factors that affected food production and food availability. Both sets of factors must be taken into account in assessing the famine.
Long-Term Causes of Famine
Long-term causes of food shortages… were due to the deterioration in the productive capacity of the peasant populations and to the elimination of traditional methods of coping with predictable fluctuations in climatic and environmental factors.
Foremost among these factors were government programs, redistribution of land, confiscation of grain and livestock through excessive taxes and obligations, and coercive labor programs and a decline in available labor force.
Specific government programs and policies designed to organize the peasantry and to centralize state institutions and power have had a negative impact on peasant agriculture and have resulted in dramatic food shortages throughout the country.
Land Redistribution
In Tigray, where land degradation is most often cited as a major cause of food production decline, the imposition of government controls through peasant associations was reported to be a more significant factor contributing to declining yields. In fact, Tigray reported that their highest yields in the past 10 years occurred in 1982-83, a period in which most of those interviewed (97.5%) no longer lived under government control or belonged to government -controlled peasant associations.
During this period, peasants abandoned the Dergue’s land policy and reallocated land along more productive lines—that is, land to the tiller. As a result, they harvested significantly higher yields in spite of the fact that reduced rainfall affected production in many of the areas in question at that time.
In Wollo, land redistribution, confiscation of agricultural “surpluses” (often including seed grain) through taxes and “voluntary” contributions, and coercive government labor programs that interfered with production, all crippled the ability of the people of Wollo to cope with the regular, cyclical lack of rainfall experienced in the area.
Throughout the government-held regions, fertile lands reportedly have been allocated systematically to peasant associations for communal cultivation or to peasant association officers and a few privileged individuals with connections to the officers. While these land allocation practices have reduced significantly overall production, they have dramatically reduced private, individual production.
In Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa, government programs introduced through peasant associations (to which all peasant farmers must belong) led to absolute declines in food production and availability. Artificial land scarcities were created when lands previously used privately were confiscated by the state. Some of these lands were designated for collective farming. Others remain idle. When local peasants could not be persuaded to farm collectively, some of these lands were designated as resettlement sites. Choice regions have already been set aside for communal farming; peasant labor is now controlled to the extent that private production is severely limited. This, in turn, has allowed the government to take control of even larger areas under the pretext that the lands are not being used productively.
Confiscation of Grain Stockpiles and Livestock
In Wollo, previous forms of averting famine due to frequent poor harvests—for example, stockpiling surplus grain from years with high yields for consumption during periods of low yields and maintaining sufficient herds of livestock to rely substantially on animal products during periods of poor agricultural yields—have become impossible as a result of high taxes levied according to visible stockpiles of grain and herds peasant producers possessed. These high taxes were paid through divestiture of farmers’ productive assets—oxen, seed, tools, valuables.
In Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa, taxes, “voluntary” contributions and the forced sale of grain at artificially low prices to the Agricultural Marketing Commission have crippled the production of Oromo and other farmers in the region and have depleted their herds and rendered local investment in agriculture impossible. In this region where agricultural production previously was among the highest in the country, the effects of the government’s policies on production and food availability have been devastating.
Peasant Coercion and Decline in Available Labor
Appropriation by the state of all grain produced by forced collective labor on peasant association communal plots has been a major obstacle to maintaining previous production levels on communal lands. Those who work on the communal lands receive neither cash nor produce for their “contribution”’ nor do they receive compensation in the form of services, education, health care, store goods or transportation. As a result, farmers have slackened their pace in the forced labor programs. Meanwhile the contraband sale of coffee and other supplies across the border to Sudan has gained momentum, further reducing food availability inside Ethiopia.
Conscription to the military or militia service, appointment to peasant association positions, imprisonment and killings have led to a reduction in the size of the local labor force of able-bodied young people to adequately manage agricultural, herding or other economic activities.
In Wollo, obligations to contribute labor on demand for government activities—primarily farming communal plots, lands designated “militia lands” and the lands of peasant association officials—have had a deleterious effect on peasant food production and supply, and have impoverished and marginalized large portions of the peasantry. Government policies have created famine, and are setting the stage to “relieve” future food crisis conditions with forced collective farming.
In Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa, mandatory communal farming and clearing of house sites, even fields, for those being resettled, amounts to systematic forced labor programs in these regions. These programs do not allow peasants to farm their own fields according to the agricultural cycle; they cause plowing, planting and weeding delays, and prevent farmers from defending their crops from predators and pests. Declines in production from these factors are reported to amount to one half to two-thirds of production levels achieved prior to the current government’s rule.
Obligatory general meetings of the peasant association for political education, Amharic literacy campaigns, announcement of new taxes, explanation of government policy, and numerous other pretexts prevent agricultural work and directly undermine food self-sufficiency throughout all regions from which people were surveyed, but especially in Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa. Once peasant association representatives observe overall production declines, they announce mandatory steps farmers must take toward collectivisation. Such circumstances create negative and positive incentives for moving the population into collective farming despite the severe famine conditions produced by the collectivisation process.
In the southwestern administrative regions imprisonment of large numbers of working people (particularly farmers who resist the programs that affect agriculture), appointment to perform local peasant association functions, withdrawal of officers and militiamen from active farming and the requirement that their peasant associations cultivate plots for them, conscription to the Ethiopian military, and political killings and displacement of people from entire regions so that the lands can be reallocated for resettlement have resulted, collectively, in a marked decline in the labor force and in production.
Causes of Hunger in 1984-85
The food shortages that brought on widespread conditions of hunger were triggered by different factors in Tigray, in Wollo, and in Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa.
In Tigray
- Planting delays due to military actions made crops especially susceptible to insect (armyworm) and weed infestation.
- Rainfall shortages contributed to decreased overall production. However, military activities, which delayed planting, caused reduced rainfall to have a greater impact on yields than it would otherwise have had.
- Extensive military actions by the Ethiopian army, including the destruction of standing crops, stored food, animal herds (especially oxen) and fodder for oxen contributed significantly to famine conditions in contested areas. Army attacks were accompanied by people who collected back taxes and contributions, further depleting the productive assets of local farmers as well as their ability to remain self-sufficient food producers.
In Wollo
- Oxen shortages delayed planting and made many areas susceptible to the devastation of armyworms.
- Lack of rainfall in an area where all surpluses had been appropriated and animals sold to pay for taxes or food left many people in Wollo destitute.
In Wollega, Illubabor and Kefa
- The intensification of resettlement, which required indigenous people to supply land, houses, food, equipment and services to arriving settlers, introduced famine where it had not been known recently, and displaced families within Ethiopia as well as across the border into Sudan.
Famine has resulted primarily from government policies that have been implemented in order to accomplish massive collectivisation of agricultural production and to secure central government control over productive regions of the country where indigenous peoples have developed strong antigovernment resistance. The lack of compensatory measures prevents economic alternatives and portends an imminent crisis of greater proportions in areas now virtually closed to public access.
Assistance in the Ethiopian Context
Governments as well as humanitarian assistance agencies have not attempted to systematically understand the causes of the present famine. While their assistance, they claim feeds the hungry, they fail to address the issue of whether their assistance will eradicate or exacerbate the conditions that led to the present famine. If the West is willing to feed starving Ethiopians without asking how they came to be in that condition or evaluate whether Western assistance programs alleviate those conditions, then they will face a monumental task in the future. The government of Ethiopia is establishing a social and economic system that will produce starving people for generations to come.
Assistance to the government, unless scrupulously monitored:
- Facilitates the uprooting of distinct peoples in one region of the country and the displacement of self-sufficient food producers in another, primarily through the resettlement program
- Gives hostile Ethiopian government forces access to areas that had successfully withdrawn from the reach of the state and re-established efficient, autonomous agricultural production systems.
- Reinforces transport and communication lines of obvious strategic military importance in areas that the government has not been able to control militarily.
- Supports programs designed by a tiny minority of the regions inhabitants while simultaneously undermining programs that have broad popular support.
- Allows the government to reinforce the programs that lead to the famine as well as intensify programs, such as resettlement and villagization, that will spread the famine to previously productive and fertile regions.
According to our own research and the efforts of numerous other individuals and organizations, Ethiopian government policies have become the major cause of death in the country. The provision of “humanitarian” assistance, with no questions asked, helps the Ethiopian government get away with murder. (End of chapter.)
July 2005
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