By Andualem Sisay
When they arrived at Garero, a small village in Northern Ethiopia, most of the visitors were tired and sweating. Resisting the midday heat, a farmer is busy bellow the degraded mountains of Bati town located 415 away from Addis Ababa- the Capital. After a few minutes Endris Ali, 47, climbed up the mountain carrying his sample harvest. As he approached the visitors waiting for him, he said: “I started producing cassava for the first time two years ago. Since then we feed cassava and make money selling it,” lifting proudly the tuberous cassava roots for the journalists to take pictures.

Endris and the farmers of Garero didn’t hear about cassava before drought hit the area once again in the 2003. They were forced to shift their diet and farming habits from cereals to cassava. As their village belongs to one of the frequently drought affected zone, the farmers were mostly engaged in farming of sorghum and were food self-sufficient. They used to depend on food aid of the government and nongovernmental organizations. Today things are changed. The farmers have started irrigation and producing new crops using the underground water thanks to the pumps and training they got from a stranger.

The incident
It was Eric Sprott, 64, a Canadian business man, who saw the first seed for the transformation of the farmers’ lives. The tycoon was touched by the news of the 2003 drought in Ethiopia. And he decided to donate one million USD after meeting with Tony Breuer, Executive Director of Canadian hunger Foundation (CHF) in Canada. It was that incident, which paves the way for CHF to enter Ethiopia for the first time in 2003.

Today, the farmers of Garero praise Mrs. Sprott’s initiative as a basement for the projects implemented in the area. In the past five years a total of over eleven million USD projects are implemented in Bati area. Expressing their gratitude, the farmers named the 11.5 kms corrugated road they constructed for truck after his name saying Eric Sprott Road. The market in the area is also named after the tycoon.

Achievement
Now the beneficiaries of these projects feed their families the soft-boiled root, which has a delicate flavor and can replace boiled potatoes in many uses such as an accompaniment for meat dishes, or made into purées, dumplings, soups, stews and gravies. “Cassava can be prepared in any form of meal,” says Tola Erbo, government agriculture extension employee in Garero area, which is one of the 23 districts (Kebele) of Bati. “We trained the farmers how to plant it and get rid of the poisonous fiber before cooking. In addition to using it for their own consumption, they are now selling the stems of cassava as a seed for those people who want to expand the practice in other drought affected areas, ” he says.

In addition to introducing themselves with cassava, the farmers are now producing new hybrid fruits, which are especially prepared by government agriculture research centers to be suitable for the climate of the area. In addition they are also engaged in covering the degraded mountains with cash crops such as jantropha, which is widely consumed by bio-fuel producers in the country.

“This success is achieved because we all worked together in harmony,” says Ebre Kebede, Bati District Deputy Governor. In the overall project planning and implementation CHF, Canada International Development Agency, Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara, the government and the farmers were actively involved, according to Ebre. “As a result of this effort, 775 households are liberated /graduated from safety net program and began living on their own,” he says.

According to the evaluation report prepared by external experts, the projects implemented can be taken as “Bati model” and should be replicated in other drought zones of the country.

Even thoughthere are currently close to 3,000 nongovernmental organizations are operating in the country, most of them are criticized for making the public “addicted to aid”. Their programs lack the component that changes the century old traditional farming and diet habits. That is why they are often resembled with fire fighters. They bring fish to the hungry instead of teaching them how to catch a fish.

The visitors of Garero, who were exhausted by the midday heat, have now found some oranges and mangoes from Endris and his neighbors’ farms to refresh themselves on their way back to Bati town.