In From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia, James McCann engages an interdisciplinary perspective to uncover the historical background to the persistence of famine in the northeast region of Ethiopia. His study focuses on the northern Wallo region, an area that was incorporated into Haile Selassie's modern state system and now one of the most devastated portions of the country. The history of northern Wallo and its position within the modern Ethiopian state is presented through an examination of the circumstances in which its rural population lived, farmed, and adapted to a changing physical environment and political economy between 1900 and 1935. This period also coincided with the most critical years of colonial Africa's incorporation into the world economy. McCann's employment of new field data calls into question previous studies of Africa, which have frequently identified ecological stress and famine as simply the products of capitalist development. What accounts for rural Ethiopia's vulnerability to famine, when it boasts one of Africa's most efficient traditional agricultural systems? To what extent have northern Ethiopian patterns of property, marriage, and ideology resisted or contributed to the overall impoverishment of the rural economy? The answers to these questions are found in McCann's careful examination of the historical, geographic, ecological, and demographic characteristics that have affected northern Wallo's systems of production. This comprehensive description of northern Wallo's historical experience is also instructive in terms of the nature of social change and continuity, and the persistence of famine throughout northern Ethiopia. From Poverty to Famine in Northeastern Ethiopia

What do peasants do in the face of severe food crisis and ecological stress, and how do they manage to survive on their own? This study revolves around a case study conducted by the author in the awraja (district) in the Ambassel Wollo province in northeastern Ethiopia. This is in the region that was hit hardest by the 1984-85 famine, which Rahmato calls "the worst tragedy rural Ethiopia had ever experienced". The author also critically examines other literature on famine response. The focus of this study is on what happens before famine comes, and how the peasants prepare for it. From a wealth of evidence, the author concludes that the seeds of famine are sown during the years of recovery.

Historians and scholars of Ethiopia have long struggled to understand the "Ethiopian Paradox": that is, how could Africa's most productive food production system, which sustained an extraordinary imperial culture over two millennia, also be home to periodic, gut-wrenching famine and rural poverty? Ethiopia in the late twentieth century has surpassed earlier icons of famine: China, India, Armenia, and Biafra. And yet, ironically, Ethiopia's highland culture also generated, and eventually exported, the iconic cuisine served in Ethiopian restaurants throughout the developed world, and in large cities in Africa itself. Donald Crummey argues that in the face of increasing environmental stress, Ethiopian farmers have innovated and adapted. In the process they have developed effective strategies for managing their environment--strategies too often ignored by conservation projects.

Aims to correct the widely held but questionable view that the Ethiopian famine was and is an inevitable consequence of environmental, social and cultural factors. The book is based on extensive original field research in Ethiopia, involving detailed surveys of over 500 families.

Concepts and research approach; A record of drought and famine in Ethiopia; Household responses to drought and famine; Agricultural constraints: conflict, policy, and drought; Prices and markets during famine; Public intervention during famine.