Tesfaye/Hope

Shot in Ethiopia and Canada, the film recounts the journey of Tesfaye, who fled his country nineteen years ago in search of a better life spending years as a refugee in Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and South Africa. Caught between nostalgia for his home country and the opportunity of a better life in another one, this film explores Tesfayes struggles; in a constant state of transition, looking for a place he can call home

Land Tenure and Land Management Technology: A Case Study from the Central Ethiopia

Land in Ethiopia is a public property. Farmers have use right to transfer or lease use rights of agricultural land. Thus, land tenure systems under the existing public ownership of land derive from official allocation by local government authorities and/or through transfer of land use rights. Farmers\u27 practice of leasing agricultural land in the country is mostly limited to a few years, for instance to maximum of three years in one agreement. The common types of transaction of agricultural land include inheritance, cash renting, sharecropping and gift. The process and act of land transfer among land users, however, is often non-transparent. The transaction usually takes place informally. The land lease market (sharecropping and cash rental) is constrained, inter alia, by lack of clear rules and regulations for secure and transparent land lease transaction. Such situation is therefore expected to influence farmers to differentially manage leased-in and own land parcels in terms of application of sustainable land management technologies. On the other hand, however, most of the agricultural land in Ethiopia requires conservation-based land management technologies. The objective of this paper is to analyze land tenure systems and examine the impact of land tenure systems on the use of land management technologies and draw policy lessons

Daily Variations in Protein Synthesis and Tissue Responsiveness to Growth Hormone, Prolactin and Insulin-Like Growth Factor-I in the Gulf Killifish, Fundulus Grandis Baird and Girard.

Circadian variations of \sp{14}C-glycine incorporation into protein and the responsiveness of muscle tissue to growth hormone, prolactin and insulin-like growth factor-I were examined in gulf killifish, Fundulus grandis. Incorporation of label during a 5 h period following \sp{14}C-glycine injection was tested at different times of day (LD 12:12). Incorporation varied during the day in all the tissues examined (scale, muscle, liver and intestine). The times of peak incorporations differed among the tissues. Scales showed peak incorporation during the dark hours. Peak incorporation by muscle occurred at the onset of light. These patterns were similar in male and female fish. The daily pattern of incorporation by liver and intestine differed between the two sexes. Growth hormone and prolactin injections enhanced incorporation of the label in muscle but the responses varied as a function of the time of day of injections. Both hormones were most effective at light onset and least effective at light offset. In tissue culture study, recombinant human insulin-like growth factor-I (rhIGF-I) stimulated \sp{14}C-glycine incorporation by muscle in a dose-dependent manner. The minimal effective dose was 0.1 ng/ml of incubation medium. Maximal stimulation was obtained with 1 ng/ml. In a time-course study using 1 ng/ml of rhIGF-I, the greatest stimulation was observed 6 h after the onset of a 3 h exposure to rhIGF-I. Responsiveness of muscle to a 3 h exposure to rhIGF-I examined at 3 different times of a day was greatest at light onset and lowest at light offset. Binding studies using partially purified membrane preparations of muscle demonstrate daily variations in the binding of \sp{125}I-rhIGF-I. Greatest binding was observed during the dark period. Daily variations in dissociation constant (Kd) and maximal binding (Bmax) were found at three times of day tested. These studies provide additional evidence that tissue-responsiveness to stimuli vary during a day. Thus, circadian rhythms of tissue- responsiveness coupled with rhythms of growth promoting hormones may produce a temporal interaction between stimuli and responses and play an important role in the regulation of protein synthesis and growth in fish

Shocks, Sensitivity and Resilience: Tracking the Economic Impacts of Environmental Disaster on Assets in Ethiopia and Honduras

Droughts, hurricanes and other environmental shocks punctuate the lives of poor and vulnerable populations in many parts of the world. The direct impacts can be horrific, but what are the longer-term effects of such shocks on households and their livelihoods? Under what circumstances, and for what types of households, will shocks push households into poverty traps from which recovery is not possible? In an effort to answer these questions, this paper analyzes the asset dynamics of Ethiopian and Honduran households in the wake of severe environmental shocks. While the patterns are different across countries, both reveal worlds in which the poorest households struggle most with shocks, adopting coping strategies which are costly in terms of both short term and long term well-being. There is some evidence that shocks threaten long term poverty traps and that they tend to militate against any tendency of the poor to catch up with wealthier households. Policy implications are discussed in terms of access to markets and the design of government safety net programs.Ethiopia; Honduras; Shocks; Drought; Hurricanes; Assets; Poverty traps; Asset smoothing; Social capital

Shocks, sensitivity and resilience: tracking the economic impacts of environmental disaster on assets in Ethiopia and Honduras

"Droughts, hurricanes and other environmental shocks punctuate the lives of poor and vulnerable populations in many parts of the world. The direct impacts can be horrific, but what are the longer-term effects of such shocks on households and their livelihoods? Under what circumstances, and for what types of households, will shocks push households into poverty traps from which recovery is not possible? In an effort to answer these questions, this paper analyses the asset dynamics of Ethiopian and Honduran households in the wake of severe environmental shocks. While the patterns are different across countries, both reveal worlds in which the poorest households struggle most with shocks, adopting coping strategies which are costly in terms of both short term and long term well-being. There is some evidence that shocks threaten long term poverty traps and that they tend to militate against any tendency of the poor to catch up with wealthier households. Policy implications are discussed in terms of access to markets and the design of government safety net programs." Authors' AbstractEnvironmental disasters, Economic situation, Impact evaluation, Droughts, Vulnerability, households, Livelihoods, Poverty, coping strategies, Safety nets, Government policy,

The Impacts of Farmer Field School Training on Knowledge and Farm Technology Adoption: Evidence from Smallholder Maize Farmers in Oromia, Ethiopia

This study examines the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) training program on farmers’ knowledge and farm technology adoption. The FFS program was sponsored by the Ethiopian government and launched in 2010. The study aims to compare the impact of the training on knowledge and agricultural technology adoption of those FFS graduate and non-FFS graduate maize farmers in Oromia, Ethiopia. For this, data was collected in 2013 from 446 randomly selected households of three districts consisting of 218 FFS graduate farmers and 228 non-FFS graduate farmers. The analytical procedure has involved two stages: in the first stage, descriptive analysis was used to detect existence of difference in the household and farm characteristics of the two groups of farmers. In the second stage, a semi-parametric impact evaluation method of propensity score matching with several matching algorithms was employed to estimate the program impacts. The result reveals that although FFS graduate farmers have relatively higher knowledge test score than the non-FFS gradate farmers, farm technology adoption index of the later farmer group exceeds the former groups. This finding suggests that there is no necessarily linear relationship between increased knowledge and increased technology adoption. This further implies that the mental attitude of the smallholder farmers in study area is not actually shaped by misconceptions of technology as claimed by the Ethiopian government, but rather because of their firm understanding of what works and does not work according to their own realities. The policy implication of this finding is that knowledge can be translated into practices if a set of enabling factors and conditions exist. These factors including farmers’ positive perception of the technology benefits, access to complementary inputs, availability of crop insurance scheme, arrangement of credit facilities and favorable output markets as incentive for adopting full technologies

Shocks, Sensitivity and Resilience: Tracking the Economic Impacts of Environmental Disaster on Assets in Ethiopia and Honduras

Droughts, hurricanes and other environmental shocks punctuate the lives of poor and vulnerable populations in many parts of the world. The direct impacts can be horrific, but what are the longer-term effects of such shocks on households and their livelihoods? Under what circumstances, and for what types of households, will shocks push households into poverty traps from which recovery is not possible? In an effort to answer these questions, this paper analyzes the asset dynamics of Ethiopian and Honduran households in the wake of severe environmental shocks. While the patterns are different across countries, both reveal worlds in which the poorest households struggle most with shocks, adopting coping strategies which are costly in terms of both short term and long term well-being. There is some evidence that shocks threaten long term poverty traps and that they tend to militate against any tendency of the poor to catch up with wealthier households. Policy implications are discussed in terms of access to markets and the design of government safety net programs.

Does Farmer Field School Training Improve Technical Efficiency? Evidence from Smallholder Maize Farmers in Oromia, Ethiopia

This study examines the impact of Farmer Field School (FFS) training program on technical efficiency of smallholder farmers. The FFS program was sponsored by the Ethiopian government and launched in 2010 to scale-up best agricultural practices in the country. The study aims to compare changes in the technical efficiency of those FFS graduate and non-FFS graduate maize farmers in Ethiopia. For this, panel data were collected in two rounds from 446 randomly selected households from three districts consisting of 218 FFS graduate farmers and 228 non-FFS graduate farmers. The analytical procedure has involved three stages: in the first stage, descriptive analyses were used to detect existence of difference in the outcome indicators between the two farmer groups. In the second stage, we applied a semi-parametric impact evaluation method of propensity score matching with several matching algorithms to estimate the program impact. In the third stage, we used Difference-in-Difference as robustness check in detecting causality between program intervention and the technical efficiency changes. Our result shows that although FFS graduate farmers were identified with statistically significant positive technical efficiency difference from non-FFS graduate farmers before the FFS training, this result was reversed two years after the training. This decreasing trend in the technical efficiency of the FFS graduate farmers is explained by their reduced family labour allocation per hectare of their farmland.  As the FFS graduate farmers allocate most of their time for numerous mandatory meetings, trainings, community mobilization, they tend to use more of hired labour than maximizing their own labour for the routine agricultural practices. In the contrary, the non-FFS graduate farmers have been increasing their labour allocation per hectare and use more of non-cash involving inputs since the time of the training. It seems that the FFS training program has put disproportionately higher burden on the FFS graduates in terms giving them additional assignments that compete with the time they need for agricultural activities as compared to non-FFS graduates. Thus, it is really important for the government to consider the timing of trainings, meetings and community works so that such activities should not coincide with the peak time of agricultural land preparation and harvesting times of the farmers. Keywords: Impact Evaluation, technical efficiency, propensity score matching, difference in differenc

Opportunities for exploiting underutilized feed resources to enhance market-oriented animal production in North-western Ethiopia

This study was conducted in Metema district, Amhara Region, Ethiopia to characterize the existing feed resources and recommend their enhanced utilization for animal production. The major feeds were pasture (55.7%), crop residues (20.7%), stubble (14.3%) and hay (9.3%). The estimated annual feed supply was 833,531.2 tons DM and 94% came from natural pasture. About 33 herbaceous species and 20 woody species that are highly desirable, desirable and less desirable were identified. The total dry matter biomass and the high proportion of desirable species could be effectively utilized to support market-oriented ruminant production in the district and beyond