Advantages Of Food Aid In Ethiopia

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Adaptive strategies are the strategies in which a region or a sector responds to changes in their livelihood through either autonomous or planned adaptation. Coping mechanisms may develop into adaptive strategies through times (Berkes & Jolly 2001). Adaptation studies have often emphasized measures to reduce sensitivity by, for example, changing to forms of agriculture that are less climate sensitive, thus reducing the need for coping (Siri et al, 2005) One of the most common methods for identifying food insecure households or regions is to look at the frequency and types of coping strategies as they are used to offset threats to a household’s food and economic resources in times of hardship (Corbett, 1988).
There is increasing demand for vulnerability …show more content…

Although food aid is a standard response to transitory food insecurity (e.g. drought emergencies), in Ethiopia it has become an institutionalised response to chronic food insecurity as well. Annual food aid deliveries to Ethiopia since 1980 have varied from 200,000 to 1,200,000 metric tons. The number of ‘needy’ Ethiopians between 1980 and 1995 ranged from 2.5 million (1987) to 7.85 million (1992), and in the current drought emergency it stands at 7.7 million. Food aid deliveries to Ethiopia averaged of national cereals production or 12kg per capita - between 1985 and 1995, peaking at 26 percent in famine years (Clay et al. …show more content…

These reactions are letting the management and benefactors to discount the fundamental causes of food insecurity. Even worse, a recent analysis found evidence of a disincentive effect on agricultural production, exacerbated by food aid’s “continuance during good harvest years and its distribution in non-emergency regions of the country” (Teressa and Heidhues 1998:132). Part of the problem is the high volume of non-emergency food aid and food-for-work, which increases food supplies and depresses prices in local markets. To reduce dependency and create incentives for farmers and traders, at least where nascent markets exist, relief programming should shift from food to cash transfers cash-for-work rather than food-for-work, perchance financed by monetisation of food

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