Can Foreign-Owned Farms Solve Food Crisis?
Last year, Melka and his wife, Shashe Dima — then pregnant with their sixth child — endured overwhelming hunger due to lack of rain. This year too much rain — three consecutive weeks fell at precisely the wrong time — could make it even worse. “Nature seems to be at odds with us,” says Dima, seated on a hide, breast-feeding her last-born. Melka is just one of the many farmers whose tiny plots of will fail to sustain them through the year. Some farmers will move to other parts of the country to hire themselves out as workers until the next planting season. But most stay home, hoping for assistance from the government and donors. Melka and his family will join the 6.4 million people officially identified as food insecure in the country. This has become a major headache for authorities in Ethiopia, where self-sufficiency in food is a distant prospect despite government prioritising agriculture an engine of growth. The long term Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) str
