Hunger and food shortages have been endemic in rural Ethiopia for countless generations; nevertheless, it was not until the mid-1970s, following the fall of the imperial regime and its replacement by the military government, the Derg, that food security became a concern in public policy discourse, and a variety of program initiatives were put in place to tackle the problem. Since then there has been increased awareness of the complex causes of food shortages and a growing determination on the part of decision-makers to bring to an end the blight of hunger and malnutrition that has been so much a part of the daily lives of millions of poor and vulnerable people in the country. This book stems from the LEAFS (Linking Emergency Assistance with Food Security) project initiated in 2007 as a collaborative project between Wageningen University Disaster Studies Department and Bahir Dar University Department of Disaster Risk Management and Sustainable Development. The project sought to understand linkages between the global and local levels in food security policy and practice, and included local level research by PhD students in two weredas of Amhara Region. This resultant volume this brings together a wide diversity of research works, many of which were specifically commissioned, looking at the effects of food security interventions broadly, and the PSNP in particular, on individuals households, communities, regions and the country as a whole, providing a springboard for wider public debate and reflection.

Under its program of land investments, the Ethiopian government has leased out huge tracts of land to domestic and foreign investors on terms that are highly favorable to both but particularly to foreign ones. Critical reports on the bonanza reaped by foreign capital have appeared in the world media and the websites of international activist organizations, and while some of these are based on questionable evidence, the global attention they have drawn may well be deserved given the image of the country as a land of poverty and hunger. This study, which is based on information gathered from field interviews as well as other sources, looks at the subject from a land rights perspective, with emphasis on the relations of power between small land-users and their communities on the one hand and the state on the other. At bottom what is at stake is the land and the resources on it, and what is being grabbed are rights that in most cases belong to peasant farmers, pastoralists and their communities. In the long run, the shift of agrarian system from small-scale to large-scale, foreign dominated production -which is what the investment program is now doing- will marginalize small producers, and cause immense damage to local ecosystems, wildlife habitats and biodiversity.

This volume brings together a number of studies on rural Ethiopia written by the author in recent years and offered as a contribution to the emerging debate on agrarian change in the country. The broad time frame for the work is the last half-century of modern Ethiopia, from the 1950s to the beginning of the 2000s, a period which coincides politically with the country's three regimes, namely the imperial regime of Haile Sellassie, which was replaced by a military-Stalinist junta known as the Derg, and the present regime which came to power after overthrowing the latter. Over this half century much has changed in the country but much also remains the same. Similarly, while the three political regimes differ radically in a number of significant respects, they also have many things in common, particularly in their relations to the peasantry, their quest for a strong presence in the countryside, and, in some respects, in their approach to development management.

Action for Development, Christian Aid, and Inter-Church Organization for Development Cooperation commissioned this study. They are all active in Wollaita, one of the most densely populated areas of Ethiopia. It examines the development interventions of the last four and a half decades from the point of view of three key determinants of poverty and destitution: population dynamics and land shortage, urbanisation and commercialisation, and livelihood diversification. The interventions are found to have largely failed to address these key determinants; and the study suggests that a considerable change of policy is needed to put these determinants at centre stage and to accelerate the pace of development. Dessalegn Rahmato won the 1999 Prince Claus Award in recognition of significant achievements in the field of research and development. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Forum for Social Studies, and was formerly its Executive Director. He has published on land and agrarian issues, food security, environmental policy, and poverty in Wollaita. His current research is on civil society and democratisation.

This study illustrates that assistance to human rights has been instrumental in the emergence of a voluntary sector in Ethiopia. Humanitarian assistance and socio-economic development have been notable too; however assistance to democratisation has been limited, in part due to the failure of political parties to broaden their power base. In contrast, there have been some notable local achievements in areas such as elections and press freedom.

The three papers published in this volume were originally presented at the First International Conference on the Ethiopian Economy, convened by the Ethiopian Economic Association in Addis Ababa in 2003. From historical perspectives, the papers consider: poverty and agricultural involution; poverty and urban governance institutions; and HIV/AIDS and poverty.