Household Livelihood Strategies in Southern Wollo: The Case of Denka Ka, Ambassel Woreda
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Date
2002-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study is a result of three months of field work in the Denka Kebele Association (KA) in Amhara Regional
state in Northern Ethiopia. Research was conducted among households who cultivate plots of land and keep
livestock in a rugged ecosystem.
An analysis of data from households interviewed indicated that the traditional agriculture has remained the main
economic activity and the majority of farmer-producers practices it. The traditional farming system is based on
small plots of land, family labor, small-scale production and limited capital input. The livelihood and food security
of households is influenced primarily by farm and grazing land availability. Land has the most important influence
on the livelihood strategies employed by households, type of crop harvested, and the type and number of livestock
possessed or kept by households. The size of household land holding in the research area has been decreased
considerably over the past decades. This process has been accompanied by population increase. Population
increase coupled with land redistributions contributed to the land diminution at the household level. The recent
land redistribution, which was carried out in 1991 particularly, had a serious impact on the diminution of land size
as it included town dwellers that were not previously farmers. The diminution of land size in turn has an impact on
share cropping arrangements and inter-community relationships. Sharecropping arrangements are shifting in favor
of landowning households because newly established households, returnees from resettlement and land short
households need land though the carrying capacity of the land is limited. Furthermore, a patron-client relationship
is developing between landowning and landless households. On the other hand, newly established households are
becoming dependent on their parents (often fathers) in order to have land to construct their houses. These
households do not have direct access to services provided by the local government such as credit. They depend on
their fathers to access such services. Consequently, a “new domain” that stands between the already contrasting
“domestic” and “public domains” is in the formation. Furthermore, fathers become the most influential
counterparts in bargaining and decision making in the household.
Scarcity of land has an impact on livestock ownership. The decrease in the size of grazing land has an impact on
the number and type of livestock households own. As land becomes scarce, the number of livestock households
has decreased and the kind of animals shifted to animals that need less grazing area while they can bring about
more income. Analysis of data further shows that shortage of grazing land and the subsequent limit in the number
and type of livestock make ownership of livestock less important in differentiating households.
Labor cannot be identified in isolation from other household resources. The mere availability of family labor in the
rural parts of the country can hardly make a household viable given the lack of employment and/or low wage
which often hardly enable to sustain the household for a larger period of time in the year.
Looking into coping strategies of households, those households that shifted from crop production to marketable
cash crops and products such as chat, coffee, eucalyptus trees, sesame, fruit trees, etc.; those households that
diversify to raising animals which need less grazing area and that can bring in more money and those households
that involve in the market can cope with crises more successfully. Such households are engaged in risk
minimization prior to the crises period. Whenever there is crisis, households can modulate to risk absorption,
which includes dependence on cash credit or food aid in the food-for-work program. The last way out to
households that do not have assets at their disposal is reliance on sale of animals, famine foods and reduction of
consumption, which are referred as risk taking to survive
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Social Anthropology