7 ms·

Turning Ethiopia's desert green

94 points by ghosh 12y ago

danmaz74 12y ago
This is great news, how to use old technology when it's the best solution for the present problem. It would also have been great to have a schema of how the terraces actually work. If you're curious like me, here are some pictures of the actual terraces: https://www.google.com/search?q=Tigray+terracing https://www.google.com/search?q=Tigray+terracing
panglott 12y ago
It's kind of weird to refer to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s without reference to the Derg, the Red Terror, and the economic and political violence that caused it to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethi...
- m0skit0 12y ago
  These evil Reds... But of course US-backed emperor Selassie had nothing to do with the disastrous economy despite ruling as an absolute monarch for 60 years. And the Ogaden War where US-backed Somalia attacked Ethopia also had nothing to do. And no talk about the White Terror either. It's so easy to simplify to justify one's political positions, isn't it?
  - sdenton4 12y ago
    Ethiopia and Iran are both great examples of the West propping up pretty terrible dictators, who were subsequently replaced by something much worse. That foreign involvement certainly doesn't release the Derg from blame for their predilection for torture and mass-murder though... It's important to be a bit cognizant of the political situations, though. The willful ignorance of Ethiopia's political reality when Live Aid happened led to piles of charity dollars essentially going straight to the Derg, and thus into arms deals to continue the war with Eritrea.
  - panglott 12y ago
    I'm more pointing out that there is a history of political violence that undermined the country's economic conditions. Famine doesn't come only from a drought or a land use change, but most disastrously occurs with more basic political and economic breakdown. This is something that it easy to forget or ignore from a privileged position in the US. The US has been at war in Somalia just as part of the GWOT for basically a decade, yet with so little press and attention in the US press that the cost and benefit to regional stability is never discussed, for example. It's the article's use of the mid-1980s famines as a hook for discussing economic development as a technical land-use issue that makes the omission more glaring. And it would be a more interesting article, to consider the history of efforts to abolish feudal land tenure, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia I'm curious about the use of compulsory collective agricultural labor that has made this possible, though ;)
MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
My girlfriend did her Msc. in agricultural economics by spending months in Ethiopia, touring villages in a Toyota SUV with a driver and two translators and evaluating the various development programs. I joined her for the last 3 weeks, and so I got to know some of the guys that run these programs and the whole cultural UN/Worldbank etc. bubble. I came away impressed, the country itself is very under-developed, but these people (mostly) made a good impression. They try to do as much as possible on their own, and not relying too much on foreign expertise or leadership. Its not exactly a democracy, and some programs are essentially forced labour, requiring villagers to work for free and build these terraces and irrigation etc., but it works and they have no money to do it any other way. Places where people used to starve are now food-secure. It is also a great country to travel, violence is very rare and the food is really nice. It helped to eliminate lots of preconceptions I had.
- rmc 12y ago
  Can confirm. Ethiopia is a wonderful country, and very definitly off the beaten path a lot. It's maintained it's own independence for a long time and is quite unique.
  - vixen99 12y ago
    its own independence.
  - 616c 12y ago
    Ironic. Having recently been at UN camps in Kenya, I will let you guess where the few that would inspire the violence end up. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483a16.html http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483a16.html See UNHCR 2015 Projection Figures for Kenya
- msandford 12y ago
  > Its not exactly a democracy, and some programs are essentially forced labour, requiring villagers to work for free and build these terraces and irrigation etc Well it's not as though a democracy is absolutely the best either; there are all kinds of undesirable features like losing 49/51 and getting basically no say for the next four years. But I digress. In the case where very little money changes hands (subsistence farming) then compulsory labor is a more effective tax than requiring cash payments. Any percentage of nothing is still nothing. And at only 20 days out of a notional 250 work day year, it's less than a 10% tax which seems incredibly reasonable compared to what people in the developed world pay, generally between 20% and 70% (or more) depending on country, state and city.
dylanz 12y ago
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI This video has been posted before, and permaculture has been as well, but it's extremely relevant. Terracing takes "a lot" of work which is a downside. There are other downsides as well, but it's a formidable strategy when dealing with steep hills. The hill in the picture from the article actually looks swale-able, which would be a much better approach (more overall water saturation).
- briantakita 12y ago
  "Green Gold" is another documentary that describes some projects of greening deserts in China, Ethiopia, & Jordan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A
JoeAltmaier 12y ago
I wonder. Wouldn't it be better to move all these people to Montana or something, onto empty land that's got to be better than where they're at? Not like they're tied to the land; they are all refugees apparently. I wouldn't mind them as neighbors: "God helps those who help themselves" is pretty much how we operate around here too.
- nine_k 12y ago
  For one thing, it's much colder in Montana than in Ethiopia. Next, what would we do with these people's agricultural output? The US government pays current farmers not to use land to keep food prices up. US have 721k farmers; Ethiopia has 86M population.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    The point was, they want to feed themselves. Profit is further down the road.
    - ido 12y ago
      I think for the cost of moving 86m people halfway across the world you can probably develop Ethiopia instead (Israel produces 95% of its own food while being more arid than Ethiopia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel)
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Just to speculate on that: Talking about Tigray, with a population of 4.3 millions. I wonder if the equipment to farm to feed those people would actually weigh less than the people? A few thousand boat trips would serve to move them all. In fact, once a fraction had been moved, pressure would be reduce in Tigray to house and feed the remainder. Remember America took in 65 Million people over its history. Most of those came by steam ship. Today it would be faster and cheaper by far.
berkus 12y ago
Electricity... don't they have some spare Sun there?
im3w1l 12y ago
It's quite fascinating how they didn't have terraces until now. It really is an ancient technique, its around 7,000 years old. That's older than the plow.
tdaltonc 12y ago
I'd love to see more genetic engineering talent put toward greening deserts.

94 points by ghosh 12y ago

This is great news, how to use old technology when it's the best solution for the present problem. It would also have been great to have a schema of how the terraces actually work. If you're curious like me, here are some pictures of the actual terraces: https://www.google.com/search?q=Tigray+terracing https://www.google.com/search?q=Tigray+terracing

panglott 12y ago

It's kind of weird to refer to the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s without reference to the Derg, the Red Terror, and the economic and political violence that caused it to happen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%9385_famine_in_Ethi...

m0skit0 12y ago
These evil Reds... But of course US-backed emperor Selassie had nothing to do with the disastrous economy despite ruling as an absolute monarch for 60 years. And the Ogaden War where US-backed Somalia attacked Ethopia also had nothing to do. And no talk about the White Terror either. It's so easy to simplify to justify one's political positions, isn't it?
- sdenton4 12y ago
  Ethiopia and Iran are both great examples of the West propping up pretty terrible dictators, who were subsequently replaced by something much worse. That foreign involvement certainly doesn't release the Derg from blame for their predilection for torture and mass-murder though... It's important to be a bit cognizant of the political situations, though. The willful ignorance of Ethiopia's political reality when Live Aid happened led to piles of charity dollars essentially going straight to the Derg, and thus into arms deals to continue the war with Eritrea.
- panglott 12y ago
  I'm more pointing out that there is a history of political violence that undermined the country's economic conditions. Famine doesn't come only from a drought or a land use change, but most disastrously occurs with more basic political and economic breakdown. This is something that it easy to forget or ignore from a privileged position in the US. The US has been at war in Somalia just as part of the GWOT for basically a decade, yet with so little press and attention in the US press that the cost and benefit to regional stability is never discussed, for example. It's the article's use of the mid-1980s famines as a hook for discussing economic development as a technical land-use issue that makes the omission more glaring. And it would be a more interesting article, to consider the history of efforts to abolish feudal land tenure, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Ethiopia I'm curious about the use of compulsory collective agricultural labor that has made this possible, though ;)

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago

My girlfriend did her Msc. in agricultural economics by spending months in Ethiopia, touring villages in a Toyota SUV with a driver and two translators and evaluating the various development programs. I joined her for the last 3 weeks, and so I got to know some of the guys that run these programs and the whole cultural UN/Worldbank etc. bubble. I came away impressed, the country itself is very under-developed, but these people (mostly) made a good impression. They try to do as much as possible on their own, and not relying too much on foreign expertise or leadership. Its not exactly a democracy, and some programs are essentially forced labour, requiring villagers to work for free and build these terraces and irrigation etc., but it works and they have no money to do it any other way. Places where people used to starve are now food-secure. It is also a great country to travel, violence is very rare and the food is really nice. It helped to eliminate lots of preconceptions I had.

rmc 12y ago
Can confirm. Ethiopia is a wonderful country, and very definitly off the beaten path a lot. It's maintained it's own independence for a long time and is quite unique.
- vixen99 12y ago
  its own independence.
- 616c 12y ago
  Ironic. Having recently been at UN camps in Kenya, I will let you guess where the few that would inspire the violence end up. http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483a16.html http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e483a16.html See UNHCR 2015 Projection Figures for Kenya
msandford 12y ago
> Its not exactly a democracy, and some programs are essentially forced labour, requiring villagers to work for free and build these terraces and irrigation etc Well it's not as though a democracy is absolutely the best either; there are all kinds of undesirable features like losing 49/51 and getting basically no say for the next four years. But I digress. In the case where very little money changes hands (subsistence farming) then compulsory labor is a more effective tax than requiring cash payments. Any percentage of nothing is still nothing. And at only 20 days out of a notional 250 work day year, it's less than a 10% tax which seems incredibly reasonable compared to what people in the developed world pay, generally between 20% and 70% (or more) depending on country, state and city.

dylanz 12y ago

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xzTHjlueqFI This video has been posted before, and permaculture has been as well, but it's extremely relevant. Terracing takes "a lot" of work which is a downside. There are other downsides as well, but it's a formidable strategy when dealing with steep hills. The hill in the picture from the article actually looks swale-able, which would be a much better approach (more overall water saturation).

briantakita 12y ago
"Green Gold" is another documentary that describes some projects of greening deserts in China, Ethiopia, & Jordan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBLZmwlPa8A

JoeAltmaier 12y ago

I wonder. Wouldn't it be better to move all these people to Montana or something, onto empty land that's got to be better than where they're at? Not like they're tied to the land; they are all refugees apparently. I wouldn't mind them as neighbors: "God helps those who help themselves" is pretty much how we operate around here too.

nine_k 12y ago
For one thing, it's much colder in Montana than in Ethiopia. Next, what would we do with these people's agricultural output? The US government pays current farmers not to use land to keep food prices up. US have 721k farmers; Ethiopia has 86M population.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  The point was, they want to feed themselves. Profit is further down the road.
  - ido 12y ago
    I think for the cost of moving 86m people halfway across the world you can probably develop Ethiopia instead (Israel produces 95% of its own food while being more arid than Ethiopia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel)
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Just to speculate on that: Talking about Tigray, with a population of 4.3 millions. I wonder if the equipment to farm to feed those people would actually weigh less than the people? A few thousand boat trips would serve to move them all. In fact, once a fraction had been moved, pressure would be reduce in Tigray to house and feed the remainder. Remember America took in 65 Million people over its history. Most of those came by steam ship. Today it would be faster and cheaper by far.

berkus 12y ago

Electricity... don't they have some spare Sun there?

im3w1l 12y ago

It's quite fascinating how they didn't have terraces until now. It really is an ancient technique, its around 7,000 years old. That's older than the plow.

tdaltonc 12y ago

I'd love to see more genetic engineering talent put toward greening deserts.