Background

Throughout Ethiopia, where many people depend on rain-fed farming to make their livings, uncertain weather threatens countless families with hunger each year. And climate change—which can increase the frequency and severity of drought—is making things worse.

But Ethiopia is not alone in the struggles it faces. Decades of underinvestment in agriculture have hampered the ability of small farmers around the world to produce well, leaving them vulnerable to food insecurity. In 2009, the number of people going to sleep hungry each night reached more than one billion—an all-time high. That figure has declined somewhat—dropping to 925 million in 2010—but the urgency of tackling the problem remains.

Women, who are responsible for the majority of food production in many developing countries, often face the biggest challenges because of their restricted access to markets, land and credit. They frequently work on small plots and rarely own the land, which prevents them from accessing credit or gaining long-term security. For example, across Africa, women access only one percent of total available credit in the agriculture sector.

In 2007,Oxfam America, together with a host of partners, launched a pilot program to work with farmers on building their resilience to climate change. It was called HARITA, or Horn of Africa Risk Transfer for Adaptation. Today, that program has grown to become Oxfam’s Rural Resilience Initiative, or R4. It is helping farmers find ways to save, to improve vital resources, to get access to credit, and to purchase weather insurance designed to protect their most fundamental investment: their harvests.