ETHIOPIA: The village that will not need food aid
ABREHA WE ATSEBEHA, 9 June 2010 (IRIN): “We will be self-sufficient,” said Gebremichael Giday, chairman of Abreha we Atsebeha, a village high in the arid uplands of northern Ethiopia, about 45 km from Mekele, capital of the Tigray region.
He is confident that in another 10 years they will not need food aid.
The village, named after a rock-hewn medieval church perched on one of the mountains that surround it, lost 60 people in the Armageddon-like famine of 1984. Then a food-for-work programme was set up to help rehabilitate the eroded land.
– All you had to do was build terraces to prevent rainwater from rushing down the hill-slopes – the soil then acts as a sponge (svamp) and absorbs the water, said Giday.
This is a form of watershed mana-gement; Ethiopia loses 1,5 billion tons of topsoil to erosion every year, a major contribu-tor to food insecurity, according to World Food Programme (WFP).
It took 10 years for the water table to rise, allowing villagers to dig shallow wells for irrigation. Now, orchards (frugthaver) and community gardens lush with maize and vegetables surround the village. “We are blessed,” Giday commented.
Kahsai Gebremariam, an Ethiopian government official, said the village was blessed to have such a chairman.
Kahsai is coordinator of Managing Environmental Resources to Enable Transitions to More Sustainable Livelihoods, a programme developed by WFP and implemented by the government – also known by the acronym, MERET, meaning “land” in Amharic, the local language.
MERET provided Giday with the opportunity to learn about cross-breeding techniques and obtain new seeds for quick-growing varieties of maize. Since then he has cross-bred mangoes with apples – a delicacy that fetches good money in the markets of the national capital, Addis Ababa – and has introduced many new vegetables to the villagers.
– Before they would only eat cereals (korn) – now they know they can live on vegetables and fruits and also make money, said MERET coordinator Gebremariam. Farmers from neighbouring villages visit regularly to compare methods and swap tips in the farmer-to-farmer exchanges that are part of the programme.
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