Voices from the Field – Food security in Ethiopia

23 February 2011

Experiences of WOTRO researchers in their Ph.D. or post-doc projects
In 2008, anthropologist Hilde Geerling started her PhD research within the WOTRO Integrated Programme “Linking food aid and food security in Ethiopia”. This programme is coordinated by Professor Thea Hilhorst (WUR) and Dr. Jemberu Tedla (Bahir Dar University) and belongs to the research groups of Disaster Studies and Law and Governance. In this ‘Voices from the Field’ Hilde tells about her research and fieldwork experiences.

What is the research programme about?
The LEAFS Research programme is a joint programme between Wageningen University and Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia). We are looking at on-going reforms in food aid systems and food security policies, in particular the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia. The PSNP is an initiative of the government, donors and UN agencies to break the decades-long dependency of food aid in the country.

What makes your research innovative?
The setup of the programme and its methodologies are designed in such a way that we have been able to look at the Safety Net for a longer period of time in a much more ‘personal’ way as compared to other research programmes. My Ethiopian colleague, Aschale Dagnachew Siyoum, and I have done research in different areas. In his area the World Food Programme worked together with the Ethiopian government and in my area Save the Children UK worked together with the government to implement the PSNP. We both stayed in the villages of research and made use of local research assistants that knew the local area, the culture and the people. We are not a “big” programme coming from outside, but we took a more “local” approach.

What makes your research relevant?
In our research programme we collaborate as a team of researchers from Ethiopia, UK and The Netherlands. We look at the ‘workings’ of the Ethiopian Food Security Program (of which PSNP is part of) at different levels and from different perspectives. By working together we have the opportunity to look at how discourses are constructed and deconstructed at various levels. This gives us an unique insight in how ideas are being developed in terms of policies and programmes and what the realities are of the people at local level.

Aschale and I have looked at how people perceive and make use of these food security programmes and how they have incorporated them into their wider livelihoods strategies. To make it clear: PSNP beneficiary households receive six months of food aid per household member per year. We examined, amongst others, how receiving this food aid has changed people’s coping strategies to survive. For instance, do beneficiaries still need to borrow food, reduce their food consumption or engage in other income generating activities like daily labour or migration.

Which fieldwork experience will you never forget?
The advantage of ‘going local’ and having local research assistants is that it gives you a better understanding of the culture, the history, and background of the area. On the other hand you can become part of situations over which you have little control.

For example, in one of my villages several households were in conflict with each other after a couple got divorced and the belongings had to be shared. Both ex-spouses were from the same village and all their relatives were neighbours, living in the same compound. The ex-husband refused to share the belongings equally with his ex-wife; he lied about the number of cattle and even buried part of his grains on the compound. Since everyone knew that he was rich, neighbours and relatives got upset.

As result, the family of the ex-wife took him to court and asked my research assistant to write a letter to appeal. Since the ex-wife was a relative of my research assistant, he could not refuse this and thus wrote the letter on her behalf. The ex-husband then accused my assistant of taking sides and tried to attack him.
After this incident we were asked to stay out of the village for a while and ended up changing our working schedule until we received the news that the case was settled.