Tedela Abebe was a single human being like my self, only he was bigger because he was a youngster when I met him in Nazareth (now Adama) where I was doing my university service at Gelawdios high school way back in 1968. But when he drove me to Assefa (Arsi province then) and showed me his large -scale commercial farm I could hardly believe my eyes. Mountains of wheat and maize stood majestically refer my eyes ! I decided there and then that Tedela Abebe was not only bigger than me but larger than life.
In retrospect, the idea of an agriculture cornucopia was not conceived in his mind, where we could expect it to he conceived, but in his heart where the idea was only an inchoate ball of passion. It was this nondescript ball of passion that powered the idea in his mind. He himself often admitted that he loved the smell of soil, the smell of mother earth, so to speak. He had a special place, would you believe it, for the odor of livestock, sheep and goats included . In fact, he switched to rising and keeping milk cows in his estate in Addis Ababa when say government brutally expropriated his farms in 1974.
Tedela Abebe’s home in Nazareth ( one of several house in various places including Addis Ababa) was indeed an agricultural cornucopia of which relartives and friends partook without limit. Dinner tables would groan and squeak with all manners of traditional dishes inducing doro watt, kittfo and raw meat. Beer and whiskey bottles propped and Tella ( traditional Brew) flowed profusely. But frankly I do not remember ever seeing him eating himself. He should however, frown rather threateningly so any member of his fraternity who was not eating and drinking.
Tedla Abebe was toiling not for himself but for everybody else; for his relatives and friends and for all Ethiopians.
He often said:”I can produce enough wheat and maize to feed the entire population of Addis Ababa.He loved and hated his competitors in equal measures.
He loved them because they made him work ever harder. He hated them because he didn’t want them to beat him to the lofty target of single handedly feeding the entire population of Addis ababa.
Tedla Abebe, together with his follow commercial farmers of the day, is deservedly considered to he the trial-blazer of modern commercial farming Addis Ababa was indeed an agricultural consecutive of which in Ethiopia .
He understood and appreciated the advantages and benefits of large-scale farming and applied modern agricultural machinery including combine-harvested to boost not only farm foundation but also productivity. He had passion, knowledge and skills to realize his dream of making Ethiopia the bread basket of Africa and more. He might have demonstrated the full measure of his dreams to his beloved compatriots and indeed to the whole of Africa the world had his hopes not been dashed by the cruel Stalinist sledge hammer of the very government.
The Essence of the Tedla Abebe Agricultural Development Model
You may wonder how a single human being can produce maintains of wheat and maize to feed millions of people. The dynamo that powers the idea of doing so lies deep in your heart where it slowly wells up in as an inchoate hall of passion. The passion it self is driven by the struggle for survival and prosperity. Passion alone, although very important, is what enough unless coupled with knowledge and skills.
Tedela Abebe’s rural upbringing steeped him in the ways of traditional peasant farming. But he had upgrade their father primitive methods of farming to be able to do what he did. His french connections opened up new evenness of agricultural development for him which he put with practice without delay.
The major lessons we can learn the Tedela Abebe agricultural development model are the following : that the whole enterprise is an individual effort; that for the individual effort to be really productive it must be driven by passion, knowledge and skills; that the government and society at large should appreciate individual effort and should benefit materially from the fruits of such individual initiative and enterprise; and that the government and society at large should put in place an adquate incentive system for private enterprise in terms of not only pecuniary rewards but also by way of respect, prestige and influence .
Tedela Abebe’s major challenge were obtaining the right kind of the land for his commercial farming and getting the right prices for his produce. As regards the letter, he once complained thus.”I can’t get a buyer for my maize even at a price of nine birr ( three American cents) together with the sack . Those, of course, were the good old days whne agricultural gloat was thought to be to the major risks threatening collapse in farm prices, which was why the Haile Selassie government set up an agricultural prices stabilizing institution called Grain Board.
Agricultural Development Programs of the past
Even as Tedela Abebe and his follower commercial farmers of the day were hitting the ground running with impressive agricultural enterprise, famine paradoxically stalked the country with alarming frequency.
As may he well-known the 1984 great famine in Ethiopia in which tens of thousands of people perished, constituted one of the underlying courses of the downfall of the Derg regime. The one which occurred more than a decade earlier under Hail Selassie (1972/73) was also in fact one of the immediate causes of the Emperor’s demise. As over all agricultural production during the Hail Selassie reign was quite high (soyabean export had reached record levels), poor gain distribution mechanisms and inadequate government budgeting were blamed for horrendous consequence of the drought. Drought conditions were also experienced under the TPLF/ EPRDF regime. But early warning systems and goals gain distribution budgeting mechanisms prevented any major famines.
Tedela Abebe’s agricultural development model did work as regards rising farm production and productivity. However, the model had not spread far enough in the country to avoid regional shortages covered by drought. The Derg regime wrongly construed this as a reason for introducing cooperative farming under a socialist-oriented economic structure. State-owned large-scale farms were to supplement out compliment cooperative farming to bring about the presumed agricultural revolution. As it turned out, nothing of the sort happened and the general outcomes had been one of the chronic food shortage.
Food shortages continued under the TPLF/EPRDF regime despite considerable assistance to peasant agriculture through widespread agricultural extension services and the establishment of a few private large-scale farms, particularly in and around the Humera regions. Hence, the TPLF/EPRDF government’s Agriculture- led Industrial Development ( or ADLI for short) has still not delivered on its softy promise and is not likely to do so however patiently we may he waiting for it .
So, the historical part of the Ethiopia’s agricultural development offers little for solace Admittedly, Tedela Abebe’s agricultural development model might have worked miracles had the emperor effected a full -fledged land reform program and access to land had been made essay to more and more private large-scaled farmers coming in to the picture following Tedela Abebe’s admirable development template.
In the absence of substantial land reform and adequate incentives for private enterprise, agricultural extension service ADLI, GTP(growth and transformation program), WADU, CADU, PADEP, private large-scale commercial farming , etc. all failed to bring about a genuine agricultural revolution in Ethiopia. The Derg regime experimented with collective and cooperative farming, land being under state control, and failed miserably. The TPLF/EPRDF government’s monopoly ownership of land has resulted in untold economic hardship and distortion. We can not get agriculture off the ground unless we come up with the right land policy and the right agricultural development strategy.
ComparativeReasonable Agricultural development strategy for Ethiopia
First let we briefly outline the scope of agriculture development. The major area included crop cultivation ,forest development ( tree farms) , livestock, sheep and goats , poultry horticulture, fisheries,development, etc. As has been pointed out above, Tedela Abebe’s agricultural development model mainly refers to large scale commercial farming , but the major components of the template, individual effort, passion and government and social incentive for success etc are also applicable to peasant, small-and-medium -scale commercial farming.Hence, in the Ethiopia agricultural case, the first order of the business would be to economically empower peasants by giving the full property rights on their plots of land. Back up these land ownership rights with several agricultural extensions services (including fertilizer, pesticide,specialist agri-advice etc.).
In this proactive policy of environment, the initial peasant response is likely to be more intensive cultivation of the land plots, thereby increasingly production via productivity gains. Not only subsistence production but also the marketable surplus model go up. However, the major threat model would continue to be land fragmentation in the work of persistent population growth (estimated at about 3 percent for gear).
This problem could be mitigated only by absorbing the excess rural labour through accelerated industrialization. If and when this happens peasants would sell their land plots and migrate to to urban and semi-urban locations in search of industrial implement opportunities. The buyers of those plots would consolidate them to convent them into at least small and medium-scale commercial farms in accordance with the governments’ overall land use plan. That is essentially how peasants agriculture gradually gets consolidated and develops into moderen commercial farming.
On the other hand, open and empty lands are approved to be administerd by a democratically elected government through a nation-wide land use plan. Such government-0administed often land should be leased out to worthy prospective commercial farmers at nominal fees. Understandably , basic infrastructure including feeds roads, approaches, electricity, water and tele facilities, Etc, would have to be provided by the state. Major irrigation dams are also the responsibility of the government.
Of course, it could be naive to expect such proactive land and agricultural polices from unreformed EPRDF government. It is an important precondition that the new Abiy government should press ahead for more and deeper reform in order to realize an agricultural development strategy that would indeed deliver on its longstanding promise of an agricultural cornucopia in Ethiopia.
I am lucky to have lived long enough to be a living witness to the amazing agricultural cornucopia that one single human being by the name of Tedela Abebe was single handedly able to create to feed not only his family, relatives and friends but also at least a fifty of the population of Addis Ababa when the Stalinist sledge hammer of the Derg struck and dashed the dream to extend the abundance to the entire Addis population!
Herald December 9/2018
By Teklebirhan Gebremariam
