May 30, 2013 by IFPRI

By Grace Lerner

Nearly 30 years after the 1984 famine that left more than 400,000 people dead, Ethiopia has made significant progress toward food security. Some of these recent successes include a reduction in poverty, an increase in crop yields and availability, and an increase in per capita income—rising in some rural areas by more than 50 percent!

What happened to cause this breakthrough, and what steps does the country need to stay on track?

Food and Agriculture in Ethiopia: Progress and Policy Challenges, a recently released book by IFPRI Senior Researchers Paul Dorosh and Shahidur Rashid, discusses this. According to the authors, one reason for Ethiopia’s recent economic accomplishments is sustained agricultural growth. In the 1990s, agricultural growth averaged nearly 3 percent. In the next decade, it grew to 6.2 percent. Calorie malnourishment—insufficient diets or diets deficient in vitamins and nutrients—fell from…