A Summer in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia
How Farmers are Adapting to a Changing Climate
In the summer of 2015 I participated in the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development’s Agrobiodiversity Research Methods course in Ethiopia with the support of the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s Global Food Fellowship. The program focused on smallholder farming systems in the Tigray Region, where we spent the majority of our seven-week trip after training in research methods such as vegetation sampling, specimen collection, surveys, and interviews. The other participants consisted of five American undergraduates from Cornell University and five Ethiopian students from Addis Ababa University pursuing their Master’s degree in biodiversity management (M.Sc.).
The first half of the course consisted of lectures and field trips that introduced students to the fundamental principles of agro-ecology — the study of ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems — as well as topics ranging from agroforestry to Ethiopian livestock diversity. For the second portion of the course, the American students paired with Ethiopian M.Sc students to design and conduct a pilot study related to smallholder farming systems in Tigray.
A photo from a car ride from Mekelle to Axum in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
Though I had originally planned to study of the relationship between agrobiodiversity and household nutrition, my partner, Tura, and I ended up designing a study focused on farmer adaptation to water shortage conditions, as we arrived in Tigray during the start of the planting season. In May or June, when the year’s one rainy season begins, farmers plow all of their fields with oxen and a traditional plow before they plant crops like teff, barley, wheat, sorghum, cowpea, chickpea, and field pea.
Precipitation is highly variable in our area of study, the Werei Lehe woreda, or district, of Central Tigray. The area had recently experienced multiple seasons of drought. We wanted to assess farmer perceptions of and adaptations to recent changes in rainfall in three tabias (sub-districts) of Werei Lehe. We learned how to design surveys and semi-structured interviews, and spent about two weeks conducting field research with the help of translators. For the last week of the course, we learned basic data analysis techniques and synthesized our findings in an informal paper.
My partner, Tura, and I with Letebrehan Gabrehet (center) and her family in Zongi, Werei Lehei, Tigray, Ethiopia. After our interview, she served us injera with shiro, a type of stew made from ground chickpeas.
Studies have suggested that the Tigray region of Ethiopia is particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, but undertaking our pilot study made me appreciate how difficult it is to understand the complexity of climate change’s effects in local contexts. The majority of farmers in the area perceived a decrease in the amount of rainfall since childhood and in the last ten years. Yet a 2013 study of meteorological data from five weather stations in Tigray for the past thirty years did not find a statistically significant decreasing trend in the amount of rainfall in the region.
There are many reasons for the discrepancy between meteorological data and farmer perceptions of rainfall trends. Firstly, the timing and amount of precipitation has always been highly variable in the region, so perceiving general trends in the amount of rainfall is difficult. Secondly, although there has not been a decreasing trend in rainfall in the last thirty years, total annual rainfall has been below average in recent years. Lastly, the timing of the rain in individual seasons is a more important consideration for farmers than general trends in the amount of rain, especially in a region with such high rainfall variability.
In Tigray, I became acutely aware of the many limitations that farmers face when adapting to rainfall variability. The most common adaptation strategies that farmers described were terracing (when a series of “steps” are carved into a slope to prevent erosion and water retention), irrigating from nearby rivers, and water harvesting. Building terraces on slopes mainly prevents soil erosion, but it also helps maintain soil moisture. Farmers who had adopted irrigation most commonly had received a water pump for their community from the regional government. They could irrigate small tracts of land by the river and use the crops to supplement their income during years of poor rain. To practice water harvesting, farmers dig large pits next to their fields to store water for later use after heavy rains.
However, the limitations to their adaptation strategies were just as apparent as their successes. For example, farmers praised cowpea for requiring only two or three rains to mature. When I asked them if they included more cowpea in their crop rotation during years of low rain, they explained that they did not because they could not use cowpea crop residue as animal feed. Other farmers explained that though they prefer some wheat varieties better suited to variable rainfall, they only cultivate the varieties that the regional government insists will provide them with more income in the market. Many farmers explained that “of course” they would irrigate — if only they had access to a river.
A water harvesting pit in Zongi, Werei Lehei, Tigray, Ethiopia.
Conducting interviews about rainfall change also ended up illuminating issues of nutrition. Poor rainy seasons result in lower crop yields and less productive animals, so I expected that the quality of a community’s diet would decline under these circumstances. However, many farmers reported that their families eat more red teff and barley during years of low rain, as these crop types require less water than white teff, maize, and wheat. Red teff is high in iron and lysine, an essential amino acid. Barley contains a wide range of important nutrients, including manganese, selenium, copper, and phosphorous. Although low rain reduces the amount of food that farmers can produce, perhaps the nutritional content of the foods that they do eat under these conditions is higher.
I also learned about the relationship between religious practices and diet in Ethiopia. Roughly half of the Ethiopian population is Christian — specifically the Ethiopian Orthodox Church — and roughly a third are Muslim. Both Christians and Muslims observe days of fasting, during which they eat a vegan diet. For Ethiopian Christians, there are about 180 fasting days in a year. These religious dietary practices mean that increasing consumption of animal products, especially milk, is not a viable option for increasing protein intake. This is a concrete example of why interventions to improve the health of a population, no matter what form they take, must be extremely context-specific and culturally appropriate.
Injera, traditional Ethipian flatbread made from teff and a combination of other cereal grains, with shiro, a type of chickpea stew. Injera is eaten daily (usually several times a day) in almost every Ethiopian household.
In fact, though government programs and NGOs working to improve farmer livelihoods certainly provide important services, I witnessed several examples of development efforts in Ethiopia that seemed lacking in context-specific foundations. At the beginning of the program, we visited several NGOs that work to promote conservation and improve farmer livelihoods. At one NGO’s model farm and farmer-training center, employees trained local farmers to achieve maximum milk production in Holstein cows. One of the farmers that I talked to in a village outside of Mekelle explained that the Holstein breed of cattle requires more feed and water than he can provide. Though his “local breed” of cattle is less productive than the breeds that extension workers train him to care for, their low management requirements make them suitable animals for him and his family.
Similarly, many organizations continue to breed and develop improved crop varieties. They try to engineer varieties with characteristics like superior nutritional value or reduced water requirements — but introducing these varieties to smallholder farmers most likely will not improve their food security. The varieties are developed and assessed under controlled conditions, and are thus poorly adapted to cultivation on small farms where large variations in elevation, water availability, and soil quality determine the success of particular crops. Farmers would often be better off growing a range of local crop varieties.
The Holstein cows at an NGO’s farmer training center.
The “local” breed of cattle.
Evaluating and adapting current efforts to support small farmers in Ethiopia is important not just for their livelihoods, but also for the conservation of the agrobiodiversity that is present on their farms. As a nation, Ethiopia is working toward achieving food security for its population. One pathway to this goal involves the combination of increasing mechanization, the cultivation of improved cereal varieties, and intensive use of fertilizer. At least in the short term, agricultural yields would rise, so food would become more available. In fact, a commonly held belief is that every 1% increase in agricultural yields leads to a 0.6–1.2% reduction in the number of people living on less than $1 a day. But if these interventions in the farming system degrade the land, deplete soil resources, and reduce biodiversity, they would not only threaten the livelihoods of smallholder farmers, but would also represent increased vulnerability of the food system as a whole.
A farmer plows his field with two oxen in Zongi, Werei Lehei, Tigray, Ethiopia.
I cannot outline exactly what types of policies and interventions would both successfully meet Ethiopia’s immediate food security needs and sustain soil and water conservation. Just as it is hypocritical of industrialized nations to push carbon emission restrictions on developing countries, it is easy for countries — like the United States — that rely on food systems dominated by mechanized agriculture to insist that countries like Ethiopia prioritize agrobiodiversity, soil, and water conservation during the process of development. A first step in the right direction would be for organizations to respond more appropriately to the real needs and concerns of the farmers. After all, the knowledge that serves as a basis for their livelihoods has been built on and passed down for thousands of years.
Claire Chang PC ’18 is an Environmental Studies major.
