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In Ethiopia, says Jay F. Morris, deputy U.S. AID administrator, "the problem is fundamental. They are taking a bad ecological situation and making it worse. By forcing farmers who do grow more than they consume to sell to the state at prices below the cost of production, they are not providing the incentive to produce the maximum that the land, however poor, would yield." Ethiopia's food production now totals 6.8 million tons a year, with little prospect for future growth; Western experts say the country will require an estimated 2 million tons of imported food in 1990. It almost seems, says Morris with a sigh, that the Ethiopians are "determined to render themselves a perpetual beggar nation."
Meanwhile, the people of Ethiopia seem rich only in patience. As the sun climbs in the sky, those awaiting food donations outside Wukro quietly sit on their haunches. One man, Gebre Yohanes Haile, 50, has brought along his chief resource: his ox. His family is sick with hunger, and so only he and the animal made the journey. Thus he will receive just one ration: twelve kilos of wheat, two of beans and two of oil. He will sell his ox for $200, and then pay $150 for 100 kilos of grain, twice the usual cost. "We have food for today," Gebre says. "I don't know about tomorrow."
A dull roar rises from the crowd. Registration is over, and distribution has begun. Men in white shirts decorated with big red crosses dole out the rations. Elders load the 100-lb. bags onto their backs and scurry back to their village groups, shoving people out of the way as they go. As the grain is divided, the people smile. They laugh. Some even sing. They are happy. They have food.
"They won't be laughing in a couple of weeks' time," says an Ethiopian official with tears in his eyes. "Now they smile even on half rations because today they can exist." His gloomy prediction seems true. The road between Mekele and Wukro remains c
; losed most of the time. And nobody knows just when the next food convoy will come.