Achieving Sustainable Food Systems in a Global Crisis: Ethiopia

Executive Summary

Ethiopia is not on track to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, with poverty and hunger levels projected to be higher in 2030 than they are today.

This is being made worse by the conflict in Tigray, swarms of desert locusts, an economic slowdown, skyrocketing food, fertilizer, and energy prices—exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the COVID-19 pandemic—and climate change. To get back on track, it is critical to pursue policy pathways that favour synergies and limit the trade-offs between hunger, poverty, nutrition, and climate change. This report presents an evidencebased and costed country roadmap for effective public interventions to transform agriculture and food systems in Ethiopia in a way that ends hunger, makes diets healthier and more affordable, improves the productivity and incomes of small-scale producers and their households, and mitigates and adapts to climate change.

The report shows that it is possible to achieve sustainable food system transformation in the next decade by increasing public investment by USD 4.6 billion and targeting this spending on a more effective portfolio of interventions that achieve multiple sustainable development outcomes. Importantly, when comparing the financing gap between the long-term investment needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 and the short-term investment needed for emergency food assistance, there is significant underfunding of the longer-term investment needs (Figure 11). The shortfall in longer-term funding increases the vulnerability of Ethiopia to shocks and crises, increasing the number of people affected by hunger and poverty. Donors should, therefore, simultaneously increase emergency food assistance while ensuring this is linked to—and complemented with—an increase in longer-term investments to build resilience and help mitigate against future shocks and crises.

The findings are based on a review of academic and grey literature, donor-funded projects, micro- and macroeconomic modelling, and engagement and consultations with key stakeholders in Ethiopia. This report is part of a project that explores the interaction between achieving hunger, poverty reduction, and healthy diets while addressing climate change within the evolving food systems in three countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, and Nigeria.

The report finds that:

1. Without additional public investment, significant levels of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty will persist after 2030. The conflict in Tigray has provided a massive blow to the recent economic progress achieved in Ethiopia. It will take the country years to recover from the worsening hunger and poverty levels.
   Without additional public investment and more effective policy interventions, the poverty rate will go from 24.1% in 2022 to 17.5% in 2030, and the hunger rate will go from 25.9% in 2022 to 22.2% in 2030. Healthy diets are and will continue to be unattainable for more than 75% of Ethiopians by 2030.
2. Diet diversity is poor in low-income households, while high-income households have higher dietary diversity with more meat consumption. The diets of all households are reported to include the major food groups: cereals, pulses, nuts, vegetables, and meat or fish. For the lowest-income households, over 65% of their food expenditures are on cereals, vegetables account for approximately 3%, and animal foods including dairy products take up around 4%. For the highestincome households, a substantial share of food expenditures is on cereals (over 50% throughout Ethiopia), followed by vegetables (approximately 5%), while animal foods, including dairy products, make up almost double the budget share relative to poor households (6%). To transition to healthier diets requires a higher calorie intake, increased consumption of fruits and vegetables (400 g per day, according to the World Health Organization [WHO]), a higher share of calories from pulses and legumes, and a higher share of calories from animal-sourced foods, including dairy (for calcium and B12).
3. With additional public investment of USD 4.6 billion per year from 2023 to 2030, it is possible to achieve a sustainable food systems transformation in Ethiopia. The results from using a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model and household-level data show that it would cost an additional USD 4.6 billion in public investment per year from 2023 to 2030 to end hunger, double the incomes of 11.7 million small-scale producers on average, transition to healthier diets for 108 million people, maintain greenhouse gas emission in agriculture to Ethiopia’s nationally determined contribution (NDC), and increase resilience to climate change. Of this total additional spending required per year, USD 2.7 billion needs to be provided by external resources (donors), with the remainder, USD 1.9 billion to be provided through domestic resources. Currently, donors provide an average of USD 659 million per year of agriculture and food security official development assistance (ODA).
4. The financing gap between the long-term investment needs and the shortterm emergency food assistance needs is big. While the total amount of ODA to emergency food assistance increased overall from 2012 to 2014 compared with the period 2017–2019, the total amount of ODA to long-term agriculture and food security has stagnated over the same period. There is insufficient attention to bridging the short-term emergency food assistance programs with longer-term investments in agriculture and food systems, and massive underfunding of the longer-term investment needs.
5. Increasing agricultural productivity, for both plant and livestock, especially among small-scale producers is a top policy priority. Generally, Ethiopia’s policies and strategies see increasing agricultural productivity as critical to improve the economy’s competitiveness, assisting in agricultural transformation, and contributing to poverty reduction. Specifically, policy documents emphasize high-quality and targeted extension support, improved access to technology and farmers’ capacity to use it, establishment and support of farmer organizations, and promotion of agricultural research. The focus on improving agricultural productivity is strongly reflected in donor-implemented projects.
6. The effects of climate change are undermining the country’s food and nutrition security. Due to Ethiopia’s complex climate and increasing weather variabilities, it is expected that there will be a decline in agricultural and livestock productivity of between 3% and 30% by 2050. In particular, Ethiopia is highly vulnerable to drought, as rainfed agriculture contributes nearly half of national GDP IISD.org vi Achieving Sustainable Food Systems in a Global Crisis: Ethiopia and is the mainstay of livelihoods for 85% of the population. Climate change and variability, therefore, have significant impacts on agricultural productivity and related impacts on incomes, food security, and nutrition, as well as biodiversity and forestry. While the government has demonstrated a strong political will to address climate change—developing a National Adaptation Plan (NAP) in 2019 amongst other policies—and there is a prominent focus on sustainable resource use and conservation in donor projects, more effort is required to support climate-resilient agricultural practices and resource conservation together with addressing gender issues and the needs of vulnerable groups in this context.
7. The contribution of the livestock sector to total and per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue to rise by 2030 and is inadequately supported by government and donors. Current GHG emissions, total and per capita, in the livestock sector represent a major climate challenge for Ethiopia— and significant growth in the livestock sector is expected in the next decade. The government has responded with a range of policies, strategies, plans, and programs. However, despite the importance given to sustainable livestock intensification in policy documents, the authors found only three of the 32 projects implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, United States Agency for International Development and the European Union in Ethiopia address livestock interventions.1 Considerable effort is needed to transform Ethiopia’s livestock policies into implemented programs with quantifiable outcomes. Without significant additional public investment in sustainable productivity growth and diversification to small ruminants, Ethiopia will not be able to meet its climate commitments expressed in the country’s NDC nor achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
8. Interventions to reduce post-harvest losses and food waste are some of the most effective ways to address the nexus of food security, nutrition, incomes, and climate change. Important gains can be made by prioritizing policies and programs to reduce food loss and waste. Importantly, Ethiopia has policies that stress the need to reduce post-harvest food loss and to improve food safety, including reducing the spoilage of meat, dairy, and other perishable products.
9. There is limited support for regional and national institutions to improve the capacity to monitor, analyze, and inform on progress and achievements. Such capacities are critical to monitor the food systems outcomes of investments in the portfolio of interventions, including better disaggregated data to account for subnational and gender differences. While several of the identified donor projects included some form of capacity development to institutional actors on program management and implementation, the authors are aware of only two that specifically addressed the need to support regional and national institutions in their capacity to monitor and disseminate information and analysis of climate change risks and opportunities, as well as broader issues of food security and nutrition.

The report recommends the Government of Ethiopia and its development partners:

1. Increase public investment by an additional USD 4.6 billion per year from 2023 to 2030 to successfully transition to sustainable food systems. Development partners should provide an additional USD 2.7 billion on average per year for 8 years (2023–2030), from a current baseline of USD 659 million per year. The Government of Ethiopia should provide an additional USD 1.9 billion per year. This will reverse the severe underfunding of the longer-term investment needs for agriculture and achieve food security and nutrition.
2. Prioritize increased spending on farm interventions. An additional USD 3.18 billion per year on average is needed to improve the productivity and incomes of small-scale producers, an additional USD 964 million per year on average for social protection, education and school feeding programs, and an additional USD 531 million per year to move food to markets. Interventions need to focus on improving plant productivity, especially by targeted extension, access to high-quality seeds, and promoting crops, including staples and pulses as well as crops that deliver nutritional benefits, such as local crops and varieties for fruits and vegetables.
3. To transition to healthier diets, nutrition education must accompany onand off-farm investments to improve consumer choices. Attention needs to be given to the design and implementation of nutrition-sensitive interventions. Initiatives that provide nutrition education and deliver advice on storing and utilizing diverse, nutritious food products are critical to complement and maximize the impact of social protection programs, nutrition programs, and agricultural productivity programs.
4. Ensure climate resilience and adaptation are integrated into agriculture and food system policies and programs. It is critical to ensure that food systems interventions also improve the capacities of farmers to adapt and promote the overall resilience of the agricultural sector and reduce its environmental footprint. Farmers’ income gains and diet improvements can be jeopardized if climate resilience is not strengthened. To achieve such improvements, gender and the needs of vulnerable groups need to be considered when integrated measures are designed.
5. Substantially scale up support for environmentally sustainable intensification to improve both plant and livestock productivity, as emphasized in several of Ethiopia’s agricultural development and climate-resilience strategies. The Government of Ethiopia and the donor community should increase the allocation of domestic and external resources supporting these measures, respectively. Ethiopia’s policy documents already stress the importance of the private sector focusing on specific measures to improve productivity and promote climate resilience.
6. Accelerate efforts to reduce GHG emissions and increase climate resilience in the livestock sector. Policy interventions need to include enhancement of veterinary coverage through private–public partnerships, promotion of fodder production, and accelerated introduction of improved genetics once feed production and health services are in place. Supporting different types of livestock, breeds, and fodder can also help reduce GHG emissions and increase climate resilience in the expanding livestock sector. Current donor support and priorities are insufficient to support the Ethiopian government's goals and targets on climate change and nutrition.
7. Continue targeted social protection programs, mostly through cash transfers, targeting the most vulnerable to support national nutritional and development strategies, and build resilience to climate change. Additional resources need to be allocated to social programs and support for vulnerable groups. Defining needed investments at the regional level, the Seqota Declaration states that governments need to engage in the development of comprehensive costed nutrition investment plans, tailored to local nutrition needs.
8. Focus interventions and policies to reduce food loss and waste on better storage infrastructure and education. Specific investments should be focused on enhancing households’ knowledge about food waste and safe food storage methods as well as infrastructure development. This would enable producers to reduce losses during the production and storage of foods from animal and plant sources. From a healthier-diet perspective, investments such as cold storage could contribute to preserving highly perishable goods, such as vegetables, fruits, animal products, and fish, as well as efforts to improve food safety.
9. Increase support for regional and national institutions to improve capacity to monitor, analyze, and inform on progress and achievements. This will enable institutions to better support the sustainable food systems transformation, including by collecting disaggregated data to account for subnational and gender differences, particularly related to the prevalence of stunting, overweight, and obesity.

These recommendations closely align with Ethiopia’s Food Systems Pathway, which emerged from the United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021 and committed to transforming the Ethiopian food system based on the “common goal of healthy and sustainable diets for all” (FDRE, 2021a, p. 2). Specifically, Ethiopia identified five central goals for food systems transformation: 1) diversify food production and increase the production of nutrient-dense foods; 2) strengthen supply chains, including food management and handling systems; 3) promote resource conservation in food production practices and provide better access to inputs, technologies, and extension services; 4) promote methods that ensure food safety while limiting post-harvest losses; and, 5) enhance resilience to shocks (FDRE, 2021a). The findings and recommendations in this report, therefore, offer an evidence-based and costed roadmap on which to base support for the implementation of food systems transformation in Ethiopia.

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