Khuong farms on two small plots of rice paddies, a total of 10 sao (nearly an acre) in Dong Dat commune of Thai Nguyen’s Phu Luong district. She attributes the good harvest to the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), a package of good agricultural practices for hand-planted rice that increase yields while using less seeds, water, and fertilizers.

Today more than 1.3 million farmers in Vietnam have embraced this innovative farming method, producing more rice and earning extra income for their families. Oxfam has been helping promote SRI in Vietnam for nearly six years, and has made possible the ongoing training of farmers in the methods.

“It’s a smart investment needed to lift people out of poverty and to boost the national economy,” says Ngo Tien Dung, Deputy Director General of the Plant Protection Department in Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture.

SRI practices involve five simple steps including soil preparation, plant and water management. Farmers who use SRI transplant seedlings earlier and space them individually and in square patterns farther apart to reduce competition for light, water, and nutrients.

“I save quite a lot on seeds and fertilizers,” Khuong says. “Before I used almost 50 kg (110 pounds) of seeds for the two paddy fields, but now I use only 4 or 5 kg because with SRI, I transplant only one and sometimes two seedlings per hill instead of bunches of them.”

Robust root systems, bigger and healthier plants grow more grains of rice. Khuong now produces 2.7 metric tons of rice from her two paddy fields, as compared to just 1.8 tons grown with conventional methods, a 50 percent increase.

“I’m very pleased with the results, and I’ve stop worrying now,” she says.

According to the Plant Protection Department, farmers who use SRI significantly reduce the use of chemicals, thus growing healthier food, improving soil quality, and protecting farm biodiversity. On average, SRI farmers increase their yield by 500 kilograms (1,110 pounds), and earn extra income of $130 per hectare in just one cropping season (a hectare is just under 2.5 acres). This is a significant sum in a country where average income is around $1,200.

SRI honored with national award

SRI was recently honored with the National Golden Rice Award for making positive changes in the life of over a million Vietnamese farmers.

The award is an initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to honor major contributions to sustainable agriculture and rural development. Fifty-six winners were selected from across Vietnam for the first biennial Golden Rice Awards, which took place in November.

SRI was the first recipient at the Golden Rice Awards ceremony, and was recognized as an innovation that helped to revitalize sustainable food production, improving food and income security for small-scale farmers in Vietnam.

“We need to build the momentum for SRI extension over the coming years,” says Ngo Tien Dung of the Plant Protection Department, who received the award for the Department’s outstanding work in promoting the farming method.

Beyond mere benefits

The benefits of SRI go beyond increasing yield and reducing input costs. According to a report by Africare, Oxfam, and World Wildlife Fund, SRI practices have contributed to the reduction of greenhouse gases released from agricultural activities.

By improving nutrient use efficiency, farmers reduce the use of water, fertilizers, herbicide and pesticide, resulting in reduced emissions of methane, one of the most prevalent and dangerous greenhouse gases.

Farmers also reported positive change in community relations as a result of using these techniques. SRI farmers—most of them are women—learn together and help each other in the fields. This practice has created a culture of mutual support in rural communities.

Oxfam has been supporting organizations promoting SRI in Vietnam since 2006, working closely with officials of the Plant Protection Department, and recruiting local farmers to train others. These local experts formed a core of SRI proponents and formed Farmer Field Schools that grew demonstration plots and promoted the techniques.

Because farmers who try SRI see results almost immediately, the number of SRI farmers increased five-fold from 2009 to 1.3 million in 2012.

Many of these plants have been cultivated by Kichwa people for generations, but are in danger of disappearing as growers turn to cash crops like coffee or cacao instead. This shift to a single crop can leave farmers more vulnerable unpredictable rainfall caused by climate change, and more dependent on purchasing food from outside rather than growing it themselves—putting them at risk of hunger.

“Food prices are increasing. Sometimes we don’t have money for bread,” said Luz Sinarahua, who leads the group of women growers in Chirikyacu. “That’s why we’re glad to have the beans, yucca, and plantains from the garden.”

See a photo slideshow of the women and their gardens

Oxfam program officer Lorena Del Carpio said the ancestral Kichwa methods of harvesting and planting year-round can help people adapt to changes in the climate. “Indigenous people have important knowledge about how to work with the environment,” said Del Carpio. “[Their traditional way of] growing diverse crops helps ensure food for their families.”

The idea for the gardens came from listening to Kichwa women, who first raised concerns about the loss of their crops in an AIDESEP workshop designed to build women’s leadership and advocacy skills. These efforts are part of a larger Oxfam program that helps indigenous people in South America protect their cultural, political, and territorial rights.

In the future, “we want to make sure we have enough for food, [but] our main goal is to sell crops so we can increase our incomes,” said Sinarahua of the women’s plans. AIDESEP aims to organize a sellers’ fair where growers from these remote towns can exchange seeds and connect with potential buyers. And, eventually, they hope to expand the project to other communities.

To learn more about the traditional gardens and the women who grow them, see the article in OXFAMExchange magazine.

“I harvested practically nothing,” Founé Danfakha says of her 2011 yield. She grows groundnuts, maize, and rice in Bembou, a small village about 50 kilometers east of Kedougou, near the border with Mali. The 60-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of four says, “If the rain comes normally, I can get 20 sacks of groundnuts. Last year I got only five.”

Danfakha has about five acres of land. She says her last harvest was dismal: She got three bags of rice, which is about 30 percent of the normal harvest. She planted about an acre of maize, but harvested none at all.

No seed, no harvest

Danfakha is sitting in front of her home, with her four-year-old grandson on her lap. The boy is quiet, and seems to have little energy. Danfakha says she is feeding everyone in the household regularly, despite the fact that the food she grew last year lasted only two months after the harvest in November. Usually she grows enough to last four months. She says she is meeting her family needs with money sent from her daughter, who is digging for gold in a nearby mining area.

When the rains start, Danfakha’s daughter will come back to help her prepare her fields and plant. “I think we will have to cover our needs growing groundnuts,” she says. “I don’t have enough rice seed, but I think I have enough groundnut seed.” When her daughter comes back they will have no income from mining while she works in the fields, so it is a calculated risk.

“The situation is difficult here. There’s a problem of rain,” Danfakha says. “It’s been irregular. If there’s not enough rain, there won’t be a harvest. And if there is no seed, there’ll be no harvest.”

Oxfam is collaborating with local organizations in Kedougou to help farmers there and in other areas of West Africa with crucial agricultural support, so they can plant this spring. Oxfam is also planning work that will help keep drinking water clean and safe, and provide food or short-term employment for cash wages, so farmers can meet their food needs over the summer while they work their fields.

Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

She planted a maize field and hoped to grow a ton, but only got one 50-kg bag. She says the poor result was due to “lack of rain, lack of good equipment for cultivation, and lack of money to pay for labor.”

Her situation is rather typical in the small village of Bandafassy, about 15 kilometers from the town of Kedougou in eastern Senegal, where erratic rain last year hit farmers hard. The resulting high demand for food grown in other parts of the country is pushing up prices, and forcing farmers who were already struggling to feed their families to find creative ways of coping.

Erratic rain prevented any decent harvest

Camara is the one in the family responsible for agriculture, but her husband Nicolas Keita helps prepare fields for planting and the harvest – when he is not away mining for gold to earn cash.

Keita says they planted in early June, but by the end of the month it had stopped raining, and what they were growing dried out in July. They replanted in August, and invested in some fertilizer. The rains were intermittent in September and stopped altogether in the beginning of October. "The rain gap in June and July prevented any decent harvest," he says.

"Things are going to go badly," Camara says she realized after the harvest. "But we will make every effort." She turned to gathering wild fruits in the forest, such as the seed pods of the baobab tree and jujube berries to feed her family.

To earn money, her mother-in-law began making clay pots for storing water; Camara walks 15 kilometers to Kedougou (carrying a 10-pound pot on her head) where she sells the pots for about $5 each. If she can make a sale, she buys food and returns. In a good week, she can sell two or three pots.

Camara reports that after a good harvest she can feed her family for about six months, but this past year the food only lasted about four. She says she is down to her last two bags of rice, one of which she wants to save for seed. “We will always find a way to get by,” she says with a certain resignation. The threat to farmers like Camara is that of another year of diminished harvests: Successive bad years can lead to a downward spiral that even the most resourceful farmer can’t avoid.

Oxfam is designing programs to help farmers like Camara get the resources they need to plant crops this year, so that when the rains come people will have an opportunity to grow what they need for food. Cherif Sow, who works for the Kedougou Association for Action and Development, an Oxfam partner, says the need for support in the area is crucial. “We have to help the communities as quickly as possible to help them survive the lean time, otherwise it will have an impact on their agricultural production.”

Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.

The companies in PREP are: Calvert Investments, Earth Networks, Entergy, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., Levi Strauss & Company, Starbucks, and Swiss Re. Other partners in PREP include BSR and Ceres. Oxfam America serves as PREP's secretariat. Read the PREP Mission Statement.

The goals of the Partnership are to:

• Promote practices and economic growth that help both vulnerable communities and business adapt to the impacts of climate change ; and
• Promote public policies that facilitate adaptation efforts to prepare for and respond to the consequences of a changing climate.

Managing risk

From extreme weather events to glacial melt, from water scarcity to rising sea levels—the effects of climate change on global economic stability and global security can no longer be ignored. Even with aggressive mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, the consequences of climate change on communities across the planet are significant. For many, the results are more severe weather-related disasters, increased food and water insecurity, scarce natural resources, and health problems.

Community risks are business risks. On a functional level, the impact of climate change on companies’ global supply chains is already visible. For example, changes in weather patterns affect growing conditions for crops like coffee and cotton. Climate change threatens the global operations of some businesses, such as when severe floods displace families and workers in areas where manufacturing facilities are located. Such climate-related risks, and their links to broader community needs, are just beginning to be understood by the private sector.

Businesses are also just beginning to identify adaptation growth opportunities as the demand for certain products and services increases. For example, increasing water scarcity will necessitate improved and more efficient irrigation technologies. As companies anticipate and respond to these shifts in demand they should look to partner with communities with an aim towards investing in local jobs and improving livelihoods.

PREP partners

The Convention, which in its current form expires this year, is a binding international treaty that holds major food aid donors – the US, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia and others – to a minimum level of food aid for addressing emergency needs. Oxfam is calling for substantial reforms to this treaty to help address increased need and highly volatile prices.

“In the vast majority of emergency food crises the problem is not a scarcity of food but people’s ability to buy the food that is available,” said Eric Munoz, policy advisor for Oxfam America. “In most cases hungry people need money to buy food and cannot afford to wait for the arrival of a ship to travel halfway around the world.”

“The Food Aid Convention needs to ensure our aid dollars provide a bigger bang for the buck.  It must be brought up to date with modern approaches to deal with food crises and strip the inefficiencies that cost time, money and lives,” said Munoz.

Far too much emergency aid to address hunger is too slow, and much is wasted on the shipping costs of food stocks, particularly from the US and Japan. On average, more than 50 percent of the cost of food aid shipped from the United States goes to pay shipping and procurement costs. Reforms to the Convention, especially those that encourage the local and regional purchase of food aid, can help to cut inefficiencies and provide taxpayers with a much greater return on their investments.

A reformed Convention would broaden its approach to addressing emergencies including by providing cash to purchase food locally and providing agricultural inputs to farmers to recover from disasters. This assistance should be “need-based”, driven by the levels of aid necessary to meet humanitarian requirements.  Instead of focusing purely on the amount of food pledged, the Convention should focus on the number of people it needs to reach.

A new approach would improve people’s means of obtaining enough food to eat during and immediately after a crisis.   The Convention must also be integrated into the emerging global food security mechanisms such as the UN’s Committee on World Food Security, which will help create a more coherent strategy between emergency and longer-term efforts to tackle global hunger.

“Negotiators should work to bring greater transparency and accountability to food aid. The current Convention is shrouded in secrecy making it extremely difficult to know if and how members are meeting their commitments. This information is not publicly available. Increasing transparency will help to determine how effective food aid programs are and what changes must be made to reduce hunger,” said Munoz.

But a hungry child exists in a larger context: if we nourish communities, they can nourish their own children.

The woman on our cover, Fatou Doumbia, and other women in her village in Mali, pooled their resources last year. They set aside nearly a ton of millet as a defense against the hunger they’d seen as food prices spiked. Hers is another face of hunger: determined, resourceful.

After the last harvest, Oxfam reached out to supporters to respond to the food crisis. We’ve devoted much of this issue to looking at what communities have done to avoid the kinds of hardships they confronted. When people living in poverty are hit by a food crisis or natural disaster, they lack resources to tide them over.

Oxfam works to help people build their resilience. Let respect and hope fuel your efforts to support women like Doumbia.

Achieving farm resilience requires building up the resilience of vulnerable farmers by developing their skills, expertise and voice while supporting their use of agro-ecological farming practices. Building resilience depends not just on how farmers manage resources, but on how well local, national, and global institutions support farmers. Agro-ecological practices can empower vulnerable small-scale farmers, offering them both greater control over their lives and an accessible means of improving their food security, while decreasing their risk of crop failure or livestock death due to climate shocks. Vulnerable farmers can use agro-ecological practices to build resilient farms and improve their livelihoods, achieving multiple benefits: 1. improved food security; 2. adaptation to a changing climate; and 3. mitigation of climate change.

People-centred resilience consists of five principles which should guide how investments in vulnerable farming communities are designed and implemented. They are:

1. Restored and diversified natural resources for sustainability.
2. Responsive institutions grounded in local context.
3. Expanded and improved sustainable livelihood options.
4. Sound gender dynamics and gender equality.
5. Farmer-driven decisions.

Following these principles ensures that investments support farmers in their efforts to become food-secure and adapt to climate change. Four institutions central to delivering people-centered resilience are: secure land rights; dynamic farmer associations; responsive agricultural advisory services; and public support for environmental services.

Many gave up on farming, but others, like Yacouba Savadogo, chose to stay and fight, slowly reclaiming land from the encroaching desert. Thirty years later, their work—which has secured 13 million acres of farmland and fed three million people—offers some hope for tackling world hunger.

Trees transform the landscape

How did Savadogo and others restore the land? By rediscovering and improving simple, low-cost methods for managing soil, water, and trees.

In 1979, Savadogo, a farmer and community leader from the village of Gourma, Burkina Faso, observed fellow farmers using innovative growing techniques as part of an Oxfam project.  He began to experiment with using planting pits and stone embankments to produce more sorghum and millet on his degraded land.

These efforts yielded surprising results when trees began to grow spontaneously in the planting pits he’d dug for his crops. By digging deeper pits and adding manure, Savadogo found that he could bring dry land back into production. As the trees grew, he began to protect them, turning his barren land into a diverse forest of useful tree species.

In the years since, Savadogo has organized events to exchange seeds and ideas and to train other farmers in these techniques. He’s worked with experts like Mathieu Ouedraogo, a Yatenga-born technician who later became the director of Oxfam’s project in the region, to improve methods, conserve water, and reduce erosion.

Once-barren landscapes in the Sahel are today home to farmland, wells, and livestock. Millions of acres of restored farmland reveal a complex landscape of crops and trees, interlaced with stone embankments and terraces.

These changes have stimulated local markets, supported an ever-growing population, and diversified people’s ways of earning a living. And despite growing populations and the threats of climate change, food security has actually improved in the Sahel region.

Lessons for fighting hunger

This week, Oxfam is hosting Savadogo, Ouedraogo, and other innovators from the Sahel in Washington, DC, for discussions with US legislators about local solutions to food insecurity and climate change.

“With over one billion people worldwide now facing chronic hunger—and climate change further threatening the global food supply—our leaders and aid providers can learn a lot from the efforts of farmers like Savadogo,” says Oxfam trade policy advisor Emily Alpert.

“Africa’s agricultural future rests on broad partnerships and alliances, catalyzed by farmers,” says Alpert. “US Congress can help replicate these successes by passing the 2009 Global Food Security Act (HR 3077), which calls for a coordinated and comprehensive US global food security strategy that leverages partnerships with the private sector, NGOs, and universities. If we’re going to build people’s resilience to poverty, climate change, and conflict, we must work together to invest in agriculture and to conserve our natural resources.”

You can help: Join our online community and tell legislators to stand up for the millions of people around the world who face hunger on a daily basis.

More than 6 million farmers across the country grow teff, but it’s here, in rugged Adi Ha, where rocks litter the fields like confetti, that this new kind of insurance may take root and spread. An initiative coordinated by Oxfam America and supported by more than a dozen partners, its goal is to help some of the world’s poorest farmers bounce back when drought destroys their crops. And the payout isn’t only in cash. It’s in confidence—the kind that may help propel people out of poverty.

“Without insurance, poor farmers who experience drought might run through all their savings, fall into debt, or sell their livestock and other valuables—often to ruinous results,” says Mengesha Gebremichael, the micro-insurance officer at the Relief Society of Tigray and one of the project’s managers. “In contrast, insured farmers will be more resilient to those shocks. They’ll be in a better position to take out small loans that could help them make big improvements in their next harvest—loans for things like high-yield seeds. They’ll be more confident that they can pay the money back knowing they have insurance to support them if trouble strikes.”

June to October marks the main rainy season in Adi Ha, a critical time for local farmers who depend on the skies to water their teff fields. For poor families living close to the edge, where even a $20 or $30 loss can push them over, there is no room for mishap. Without rain, they face disaster. That’s where the weather insurance comes in. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time, farmers who have purchased the insurance can receive a payout to help cover their losses.

The old ways may not be enough

In Ethiopia, families have always had traditional ways of coping with extraordinary expenses. If they lose their livestock in a disaster, such as drought, those who are better off will contribute an animal or two to help them rebuild their herds, for instance. Families may also share seeds for planting, or food when it’s in terribly short supply.

But with climate change—and the erratic weather that it brings—the traditional means of surviving bad times may no longer be enough.

“Climate change is dramatically increasing agricultural risk across the planet,” says Marjorie Victor Brans, a senior policy advisor at Oxfam America. “The frequency of droughts and other shocks in Adi Ha is likely to increase, and poor farmers will be among the hardest hit. It’s a hugely challenging phenomenon.”

With 85 percent of Ethiopians employed in farming, much of it rain-fed, the need for new tools to manage the risks is huge. But the market for insurance is miniscule: only about 300,000 people in a country of nearly 80 million now have it. Extending the option to rural areas is loaded with challenges, not the least of them being the concern that poor farmers simply don’t have the money to pay for premiums—even the smallest one.

Work is the answer

This new program has solved that problem with a simple solution: It has arranged for the poorest farmers to use their labor to buy insurance, tapping into a new social security initiative the Ethiopian government launched a few years ago. Called the Productive Safety Net Program, or PSNP, it helps about 8 million of the country’s most vulnerable residents by providing them with food or cash in exchange for work.  Through the PSNP, 130 Adi Ha farmers are now working extra days on community projects, such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation, to pay for their premiums. In this pilot year, Oxfam provided funds to the PSNP to cover this part of the project.

The option to trade labor for insurance has substantially boosted the number of farmers able to participate in the program, nearly doubling the enrollment that was expected.

“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Medhin Reda, a single mother who will be working 24 days for her premium. “That is the only asset I have.”

For Selas Samson Biru, who is spending 192 birr on insurance, it will help address the uncertainties that have always been part of farming, especially now that global warming may be altering familiar weather patterns.

“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” she says. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”

Farmers take center stage

And the insurance may be extra helpful because it was tailored specifically for farmers like Biru. In fact, she was one of five community members chosen by villagers to join the insurance design team. Twenty-one other farmers participated in a series of test workshops on climate change and financial literacy. Focus group discussions and economic risk simulations carried out in the community helped the design team understand what kind of insurance product would work best in Adi Ha. And on the day of enrollment, about 600 farmers showed up for a host of activities explaining the offerings, including musical performances, a play, peer-to-peer outreach, and financial training.

“Today is a historic day for the farmers of Adi Ha,” said Brans as the activities wound to a close that day and organizers counted the final tally of takers. Among the 200 were 75 women, which represents about 22 percent of all female-headed households in Adi Ha—one of the most vulnerable groups the project  is aiming to help. On average, farmers are paying 138 birr for their premiums—or a little more than $12 each. Some chose packages that allowed them to pay as little as 76 birr, or about $6.75. The maximum premium was 288 birr, or just over $23.

“We are experimenting,” said Gebru Kahsay a few months after investing 192 birr into an insurance package. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”

Next steps

Lots of learning has already taken place during the 18 months Oxfam and its partners spent in preparation for the launch of this project. And each of those partners has been contributing its own expertise. Besides the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST, one of the largest aid groups in Africa which has worked closely with the people of Adi Ha, other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company, an Ethiopian firm that is providing the insurance; Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurers which has helped fund the launch and is providing technical expertise; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which is providing research on climate data. Additionally, the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI, the primary provider of loans to families in Adi Ha, helped both to design the pilot and to educate farmers about the pros and cons of insurance.

“We had to work very hard to design a risk management package that was affordable and attractive to farmers, while still being potentially profitable to the insurance industry,” says Bekabil Fufa, an agricultural expert in Oxfam America’s Horn of Africa regional office. “And we had to make it compelling to government and donors who feel it will address the threat of climate change.”

With a solid model now in place, Oxfam is planning in the coming year to expand the initiative into four new villages in Tigray--the region where Adi Ha is located—and into one village in Amhara, another drought-prone region to the south. Eventually, the project partners  would like to see weather insurance offered to poor farmers throughout  Ethiopia.

It will require a leap of faith by farmers across the country as well as support from the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector,” says Gebremichael. “But given the long lead times required to build resiliency to climate change, we can’t afford to wait until tomorrow to try.”

Reda, 45, is a farmer in Adi Ha, a collection of small villages in Tigray, a rocky region of northern Ethiopia.  Here, rainfall is becoming increasingly unpredictable, and for the farmers who depend on its regularity to ensure their fields will produce food for their families, the change in weather patterns is deeply troubling.  Without rain, the crops of hundreds of farmers in Adi Ha won’t grow.

Already this year the rains were six weeks late, coming in mid July instead of early June. That meant the corn got a late start and some farmers didn’t bother with sorghum at all. Still, hopes were high for teff, the tiny grain that is a staple for people here—and across Ethiopia where 6 million farmers grow the nutrient-rich cereal. Reda is one of them.

Taking no chances

But this year, she and 199 other small farmers in Adi Ha weren’t taking any chances. When Oxfam and its partners suggested a way to buffer the hardships Mother Nature might bring, the farmers embraced it—even if few had ever heard of such a thing. The proposal? Weather insurance designed for their teff. If the rain failed to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers who bought the insurance would receive a payout to cover some of their losses. The insurance is being offered by the Nyala Insurance Company and Swiss Re. Other organizations partnering on the project include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DESCI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.

“Because of repeated drought, which really affected me, I joined the insurance with the understanding it might solve my problems,” said Reda.

For a long time, most people in the insurance business thought that poor farmers, like many of those in Adi Ha, were uninsurable. Where would they get the cash to buy the insurance? This pilot program has answered that with a simple, and ingenious, solution. Reda is paying for her premium—like she does for other important things in her life—with her labor.

Reda, along with 65 percent of all those who have signed up for the insurance, is a participant in Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, an initiative that provides cash and food for some of the country’s poorest people in exchange for their work on community improvements.  She’ll work 24 extra days this year on projects that benefit Adi Ha—such as planting trees and grasses to promote soil and water conservation—to cover the cost of her premium.

“It’s good for me to have the insurance as long as I can work and pay with labor,” says Reda. “That is the only asset I have.”

A life of labor

A single mother and head of an all-girl household at the moment—she lives with three of her daughters; a fourth daughter lives in a nearby town; and a son is away studying—Reda works hard to keep together all the pieces of a difficult life. With one of her daughters, Abbadit Girmay, who is now 19, Reda hauled to their hillside site every stone of the hut they now live in. And to build it, she hired a mason to mortar the rocks together—paying him with a summer’s worth of weeding in his fields.

To get her own fields plowed—she has two, totaling a half hectare of land--Reda hires herself out each planting season, working three full days for the man who owns the oxen, in exchange for one day of his plowing.

Work is Reda’s currency.

"That’s why I’m thin," she says, with a wry smile.

In the corn patch just below her house, Reda stands bent at the waist , her hands flying over the weeds as she yanks and clumps them swiftly into small piles. Close behind, and weeding nearly as fast, Tekleweini Girmay, 7, follows her mother through the stalks. Reda—and necessity—have taught her well.

Education is the future

But a farmer’s life is not what Reda envisions for her youngest child—or any of her daughters.  She wants them to have what she never had: an education.

“The season is not good enough for agriculture. Our soil has become poor and they need fertilizer,” she says. “I don’t want my children to be farmers. Those who have started their education I want them to continue and have jobs. And those who haven’t started, I want them to start.” Tekleweini will be among those newly enrolled when the next session of school begins.

And Reda will be, too.

She has signed up for an adult literacy program that REST is offering.

And though Reda can’t read, her mind is filled with news of the world beyond Adi Ha that she absorbs from a small radio she keeps tucked on a shelf in her hut. Voice of America in Tigrinya and Dmitsi Woyane or the voice of the ruling party are among her favorite stations. Sometimes, Reda will  stay up until 11 p.m. listening—when there are working batteries, that is. They are expensive, about 10 birr each, or about most of what she would earn for a day’s labor.

There’s no electricity in this stone-walled compound, and few creature comforts. At night, light in Reda’s cramped hut comes from a hanging bulb hooked to a flashlight battery. She also has two small oil lamps. Household wares hang from the ceiling beamed with logs and storage vessels stand in the shadows in the corners. Two mud seats built into the walls near the door serve as beds.

In early August, green washes the hills that stretch below Reda’s hut, a sign that the rain—now that it has finally come—is ample enough for the moment. Her corn is doing well, she says with satisfaction.

And her teff?

The seeds have been in the ground for just a week and years of experience have left her circumspect.

“It’s too early to say if it’s good or bad,” says Reda.

In a pilot program coordinated by Oxfam America along with a host of local partners, these farmers have bought weather insurance designed for their  teff, a staple grain here and across Ethiopia. If a certain amount of rain fails to fall at a certain time—and their teff does poorly—the insurance will cover some of their losses. Partners in the initiative include the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST; the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re; the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.

The rain gauges, like the one in Biru’s yard, measure the precipitation in different spots across Adi Ha where rainfall  is becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it ever harder for farmers to eke a living from this rocky part of the world.

“Our season is changing. We don’t know when there will be a bad year and when there will be a good year,” says Biru. “I believe, after taking the training, this insurance will be helpful during the bad season. This will pay me.”

Biru, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance has become an expert at managing the vicissitudes of life in Adi Ha and together with her husband and six children, they have built a measure of security for themselves.

Married young, she built her confidence

Now 48, Biru was married at 15. But unlike some of her peers at the time, she had managed to attend school through the fourth grade, and when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, took control of the area, Biru stood out. Perhaps it was because of all the questions she asked, she says.

She joined the organization in about 1979 and soon assumed a leadership role among other women—a twist of fate that allowed her to develop the confidence that continues to feed her successes today. Biru is not afraid to try new things—including insurance, a concept few in her community knew much about before this pilot was launched. Biru became a member of the local team that helped design the project.

But before that, she had other experiences that allowed her to see the advantages of managing household money in different ways. Through a local microfinance institution, Biru has taken out a series of loans that have helped her to build a herd of livestock that now includes goats, oxen, and donkeys. She has used the proceeds from the sale of some of those goats to support two of her children as they make their way through university.
Income from the goats, which at one point numbered about 70, also helped the family finance the construction of a new house with a metal roof a few years ago. It consists of a long, rectangular room with perimeter seats built into the walls, two beds at the far end, and a high ceiling that helps the interior stay cool on hot days.

And though the hungry season is inching closer—the time before the harvests when the food supply of many families runs low—Biru still has a supply a grain. In a shed separate from her house, tall vessels stand against the back wall. As she uncorks the bottom of one of them, the grain makes a satisfying rush as it streams out Baskets on the floor brim with corn, finger millet, and teff.

Biru’s family has another source of bounty as well: the Tsalet River, which feeds an irrigation system constructed about 10 years ago by the Relief Society of Tigray with funding from Oxfam. More than 400 households now benefit from it. Water funneled through a series of channels connected to a dam across the river irrigates a quarter hectare of land from which Biru harvests green peppers, bananas, melons, guava, and coffee beans. That regular supply of water may free her from some of the worry about rain.

Counting every millimeter

But the irrigation system doesn’t water her teff. Across Adi Ha, farmers depend on the rainy season for that job. The main one, the kiremt, stretches from June into September. A shorter rainy season, the belg, runs from February to May. This year, the kiremt started late: the rain didn’t really begin to fall in substantial amounts until mid July, making it hard for farmers who plant sorghum and corn.

“For maize, the rain is not good. There was no rain early,” says Biru.
With her rain gauge, Biru keeps careful count of exactly how much rain falls, recording the precipitation on a small chart. Pulling it out to show some visitors one day in early August, she notes the range from half a millimeter the day before—barely a sprinkle—to 40 millimeters in a downpour on July 3.

Her crops aren’t the only thing Biru worries about when it comes to water. Her family also needs a steady supply for drinking and cooking. And often, the job of fetching it falls to her. Potable water is about an hour’s walk away, and someone in the household makes that trip once a day, sometimes with a donkey to haul the heavy load home. But a less reliable source that the family uses just for cooking, is a good deal closer—a 15-minute hike from Biru’s home.

Grabbing a jug, Biru heads down the path from her house, slowing her pace so the city slickers who are visiting can keep up. She’s going to show them what’s required to keep a family hydrated in Adi Ha, where there’s no municipal system pumping water through every household tap.

The walk includes a scramble down a steep ledge—and the knowledge of a return hike up, lugging the jug heavy with water. On the way, Biru stops at a mound of stones, bending to kiss one reverentially: below them, in an oasis of trees and thick bushes—one of the few forest-like spots still standing in the area—sits a local church. Tradition demands that the woods around the church be left alone. They’re sacred. And that may account for the small spring that still gurgles at their base.

It’s here that Biru stops to fill her jug, scooping cupfuls of water from the shallows while trying to leave the silt behind. Ten minutes later, she stands and heads home under a gray sky full of the promise of rain.

Will it be ample enough to guarantee a harvest?

“For teff, currently it’s good,” says Biru. But if it doesn’t last, she now has insurance to fall back on.

But for Kahsay, a 52-year-old farmer in the Adi Ha area of Tigray in northern Ethiopia, a good deal has changed in the quarter century since so many of his neighbors lost all their crops including teff, a staple grain.

More than a third of the families in Adi Ha grow the tiny seed. It’s rich in nutrients and serves as the base for a pancake-like bread—injera—that many people eat. The hay left after threshing is also nourishing for animals. And for families that have some to spare, the grain commands a good price in the market.

Still, for those who depend on rain to help their teff thrive—it’s the second most widely cultivated rain-fed crop in Adi Ha—growing this cereal can be an iffy proposition, especially as global warming may be forcing a change in weather patterns. The rain came late this year to Adi Ha, preventing some farmers, like Kahsay, from planting early crops of sorghum—and heightening the need for a hearty harvest of teff.

But this year, Kahsay has a back-up plan if the rain doesn’t cooperate: weather insurance. He’s one of 200 farmers in Adi Ha who decided to participate in a pilot program organized by Oxfam America and carried out with the help of numerous local organizations, including the Relief Society of Tigray, or REST. Other partners include the Nyala Insurance Company; Swiss Re: the Dedebit Credit and Savings Institution, or DECSI; and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University.

The farmers—some paying with cash, others with labor—have bought varying amounts of insurance designed specifically for their teff. If the rain fails to fall in certain amounts at certain times, farmers will receive a payout to cover some of their losses.

“According to my belief, this insurance is important to protect us from migrating in a drought in search of food,” says Kahsay, who has bought 192 birr—or about $15—worth of insurance. “It saves the lives of the family during drought.”
Irrigation is also insurance

Kahsay has a large family to be concerned about. He’s the father of nine children, the youngest of whom is just 2. But the weather insurance he is trying out isn’t his only defense against bad times: irrigation also serves as a cushion.

Kahsay is among the more fortunate farmers in Adi Ha who have access to an irrigation system constructed by REST with funding from Oxfam a little more than 10 years ago. With concrete canals and a dam across the Tsalet River, the system has made major improvements to the traditional watering network that would clog with debris during heavy rains. In the month that it would take farmers to clean out the mess, their crops would often die.

For Kahsay, the modern system has been a boon. Though he irrigates just one quarter of a hectare of land, it provides him with an array of produce—oranges, coffee, papayas, tomatoes, onions—that he can sell. In fact, 95 percent of what he grows on his irrigated plot goes to market and the income buffers his family from the hard times that farmers, who depend only on rain-fed harvests, have no choice but to grapple with as best they can.
But Kahsay also tills two hectares of land that rely solely on rain. He sews them with corn, finger millet, sorghum, and teff—and most of the harvests from these fields get consumed by his family.

Furrows of teff

Wrapping a shawl about his shoulders and tucking an umbrella under his arm—it’s early August and it’s been raining, off and on, for several weeks—Kahsay strides down the slope from where his compound sits atop a rock ledge. Though he’s been battling malaria, he moves fast toward his fields, with a string of visitors straggling behind.

Soon, he reaches an expanse of sandy soil, dusty on the surface. Shoving up through the plowed ridges are shafts of green, so delicate they could almost be a trick of the eye in the brilliance of the afternoon sun. This is Kahsay’s teff field, well-guarded by his seven-year-old grandson, Aregawi Mulugeta, standing with a stick under the shade of a tree. Kahsay greets him heartily, and together they trek to the middle of the field to examine the shoots.
The teff is doing well, he reports.

But Kahsay says he would have liked to have had weather insurance that covers too much rainfall, not too little. In this region of sandy soils, heavy rains that come too fast can be as much of a hazard for teff as drought, and 1997 is still vivid in his mind because of that. That was the year flooding destroyed 70 percent of the teff he had planted.

Climate may be changing

Despite the water-logging, Kahsay has also seen a troubling trend toward increased dryness over the decades. Like all farmers, he watches the weather closely and analyzes the conditions.

Drought used to strike every eight years or so, he says. But now the cycle seems to be speeding up. And with drought comes the hardship of food shortages—for both people and the animals that help farmers plow their fields and provide them with milk.

With those trends becoming ever clearer, the purchase of weather insurance may turn out to be one of the best adaptations the people of Adi Ha can make.

“We are experimenting,” says Kahsay. “We started with teff. If we find the insurance is good, we’ll continue. If we fail, we will take a lesson from it.”