'Livelihood fairs' help farmers cope with drought

Almaz Mamera is destitute. Like millions of rural Ethiopians who eke out a living through subsistence farming, successive droughts have whittled away at the agricultural potential of her land over the years. Her precious animals are dead, crops have wilted and failed on a parched landscape and she has exhausted all her savings. Now she is left with nothing. Almaz's plight encapsulates the continued failure to end global hunger and dependency. She has survived on relief aid, but has never been able to escape dependency. "First of all, our crops failed," said Almaz, who lives in the Hadiya region of southern Ethiopia, some 350 km from the capital, Addis Ababa. "Then as the rains still failed to come our livestock died. We spent our savings on staying alive. Now we have nothing left but the clothes we wear and our home." "The droughts steal your possessions slowly and the less you have the harder it becomes to escape its grip next time," added the mother of two. Almaz and her husband, Abebe, were finally ruined by the 2002-2003 drought and the humanitarian crisis that evolved from it. Although the drought was not unprecedented in magnitude - the last similar rain failure was five years earlier - the scale of need was unparalleled. This gradual erosion of wealth suffered by Almaz and many of her countrymen was precisely why more than 13 million people faced starvation without food aid, said the US-based charity service, Catholic Relief Service (CRS). The scale of need across the country - according to the government, the UN and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like CRS - will only increase if the lives of those shattered by continued droughts are not rebuilt. While drought is often blamed for food shortages, other causes lay behind hunger and destitution, said CRS. Relief aid can be critical in times of hardship, but it is often erratic, meaning that families cannot escape from the clutches of poverty. CRS has launched its own scheme to insulate subsistence farmers like Almaz from drought. Known as livelihood fairs, the CRS pilot plan injects capital into local economies, helps traders sell products by creating demand from local communities and stimulates seed and animal production. Local traders with seeds, animals, water containers and farming tools are drawn to the fairs, knowing that profits are a fraction higher. Farmers can earn additional income by using the fairs to buy goats or sheep and raise the animals for sale. The 12-month project, which is funded by the US government to the tune of US $3.3 million, aims to help 155,000 people escape from the mire of dependency. CRS is currently running the fairs in four regions hardest hit by drought: Oromiya, Amhara, Tigray, and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region. CRS project officer Moges Bekele says the livelihood fairs "mitigate the impact of recurrent drought emergencies" for vulnerable and impoverished communities. "The livelihood fairs help families make the transition from post emergency to recovery," he said. "They help communities help themselves because it is largely farmers helping farmers.” It is the first time ever such fairs have been carried out in the country and CRS says the initial findings are positive. The fairs, which are limited to around 400 people at a time, also boost trade in areas where markets are highly localised and often extremely weak from a lack of co-ordinated supply and demand, and an inadequate information flow. The failure of the market structure in Ethiopia is seen as one of the factors that fuel the continued food emergencies that blight the nation. Often, food is in abundant supply in western Ethiopia at the same time massive food shortages devastate the east of the country. The government-led New Coalition for Food Security in Ethiopia - a blueprint for lifting 15 million people out of hunger - cites the market economy as a "powerful tool" in reversing decades of dependency. Although the CRS project is small in scale, it is the market system the government says will jump start the economy. "It is critical to increase the participation of smallholders in the market economy as producers and consumers because they are the drivers of economic activity and in turn growth in rural areas," the government said in its food-security report. "They also constitute the largest population of Ethiopia's consumers." However, the successive droughts have meant that the farmers usually have no money. CRS uses vouchers - printed in numerous denominations - to create purchasing power. Vouchers are preferred to cash because the entire sum is spent at the daylong fairs. The community selects vulnerable families who are then given the vouchers to spend. At the end of the day, traders exchange the vouchers for cash. In almost every case all the vouchers are spent. Villagers often will combine their vouchers with neighbours if they have change left over at the end of the day. Families are usually given between 130 Ethiopian Birr ($15) and 350 Birr ($40). The amounts may sound small, but to farmers like Almaz, the sums are vast. She has seen her annual income shrink to 450 Birr ($52). CRS hopes that within three years the fairs will have become self-sufficient by creating supply and demand, thus providing the farmers with their own cash generated from previous fairs. Also key to the fairs are health, sanitation, water and HIV/AIDS-related issues. Government veterinarians are on hand to vaccinate the newly bought animals, preventing sickness. Mosquito nets are also being sold at knockdown prices for families, preventing diseases like malaria that can have a crippling effect on a country's agricultural economy. As farmers fall sick, production drops. This in turn could lead to food shortages. The African Union estimates that malaria costs the continent $12 billion every year and is the leading cause of death in children under five, leaving 900,000 people dead annually. Before the fairs start, actors perform educational plays on the dangers of HIV, which is also undermining food security in dozens of African countries by eroding the rural resource base. CRS is also targeting the same communities by providing water to lessen the impact of drought and digging bore holes and helping provide clean, safe drinking water for families. Some two thirds of Ethiopia’s 70 million people do not have access to clean water, and water-related diseases are rife. "The farmers' water sources were at the best of times highly polluted and shared with livestock, and at the worst of times dried up completely," Moges said. In rural parts of the country one in 10 people are able to drink clean water, while just one in 20 has access to any kind of sanitation. Although the UN World Health Organisation says a person should have access to 20 litres of water a day, in many parts of the country that targets is simply unattainable. Families often cannot carry such large amounts from water holes to their homes. CRS has been achieving rates of five to 10 litres a day. "This means that these communities can weather the next drought without migration or probably the death of their livestock," Moges said from the CRS office in Addis Ababa. "The resilience of the community to droughts is enhanced by water, health, and access to livestock and seeds through the fairs. They are rebuilding their assets and future ability to withstand shocks."