The Real Cause Of Famine In Ethiopia - Statistical Data Included

Ecologist, The, Sept, 2000 by Michel Chossudovsky

In turn, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute (EARI) was collaborating with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the development of new hybrids between Mexican and Ethiopian maize varieties. Initially established in the 1940s by Pioneer Hi-Bred International with support from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, CIMMYT developed a cosy relationship with US agribusiness. Together with the UK based Norman Borlaug Institute, CIMMYT constitutes a research arm as well as a mouthpiece of the seed conglomerates. According to the Rural Advancement Foundation (RAFI): "US farmers already earn $150 million annually by growing varieties of barley developed from Ethiopian strains. Yet nobody in Ethiopia is sending them a bill".

Impacts of famine

The 1984-85 famine had seriously threatened Ethiopia's reserves of landraces of traditional seeds. In response to the famine, the Dergue government through its Plant Genetic Resource Centre in collaboration with Seeds of Survival (SoS) implemented a programme to preserve Ethiopia's biodiversity. This programme -- which was continued under the transitional government -- skillfully "linked on-farm conservation and crop improvement by rural communities with government support services". An extensive network of in-farm sites and conservation plots was established involving some 30,000 farmers. In 1998, coinciding chronologically with the onslaught of the 1998-2000 famine, the government clamped down on seeds of Survival (SoS) and ordered the programme to be closed down.

The hidden agenda was to eventually displace the traditional varieties and landraces reproduced in village-level nurseries. The latter were supplying more than 90 per cent of the peasantry through a system of farmer-to-farmer exchange. Without fail, the 1998-2000 famine led to a further depletion of local level seed banks: "The reserves of grains [the farmer] normally stores to see him through difficult times are empty. Like 30,000 other households in the [Galga] area, his family have also eaten their stocks of seeds for the next harvest." And a similar process was unfolding in the production of coffee where the genetic base of the arabica beans was threatened as a result of the collapse of farmgate prices and the impoverishment of small-holders.

In other words, the famine -- itself in large part a product of the economic reforms imposed to the advantage of large corporations by the IMF, World Bank and the US Government -- served to undermine Ethiopia's genetic diversity to the benefit of the biotech companies. With the weakening of the system of traditional exchange, village level seed banks were being replenished with commercial hi-bred and GMO seeds. In turn, the distribution of seeds to impoverished farmers was integrated with the 'food aid' programmes. WPF and USAID relief packages often include 'donations' of seeds and fertiliser, thereby favouring the inroad of the agribusiness-biotech companies into Ethiopia's agricultural heartland. The emergency programmes are not the 'solution' but the 'cause' of famine. By deliberately creating a dependency on GMO seeds, they set the stage for the outbreak of future famines.