SHIFTING TO ALTERNATIVE FOOD SOURCE: POTENTIAL TO OVERCOME ETHIOPIAS' MALNUTRITION AND POVERTY PROBLEMS

The currently population of more than 70 million people in Ethiopia is expected to double within the next 30 years. Almost 80% of the populations are living in the countryside while the rest situated in urban area. An estimated five million people are suffering from lack of vitamins and essential minerals, of which 80% are children for the next generation. Every year, on the average, about five million people have problems securing enough food for them and need assistance. Preliminary surveys on nutritional and food consumption habit and secondary data have been taken with the objective to view the status of indigenous food consumption habits and a range of options for interventions. The major food security challenges are population growth, micronutrient deficiencies, pandemic diseases/AIDS, environmental degradation and droughts/floods/climatic change. Due to this fact Ethiopian agriculture is under full blow of climate risk. At a time when food production cannot keep pace with population growth, holistic solutions to the development related problems of hunger, malnutrition and poverty are needed more than ever. Indigenous/wild food items have a vast potential for addressing the food, health and income needs of the poor and landless. People around the world including neighboring countries to Ethiopia have a lot of interesting indigenous vegetable (IV) crops food habits, which can be lessens for Ethiopians. Majority of those IVs consumed in the world originated from Africa including Ethiopia. Those food items are inexpensive and accessible source of essential nutrients to a country like Ethiopia where the people experience malnutrition due to heavy dependence on cereals such as Tef (Erogrostis tef), which has low dietary source and productivity. Important foods of the world are not consumed in Ethiopia due to the reason that they are not exhaustively investigated so far. There has been no visible effort made to introduce/domesticate new food materials in our country. Many survey reports indicated that full of over looked and under developed food items that are not being fully exploited in the fight against hunger have been found in many parts of Ethiopia. Potentially use of those wild foods by the community has been also observed among which Corchorus olitorius in Afar Region, Moringa olifera in Southern nation and nationality people region and Coccinia abyssinica in Oromia region (South Western party of the country) contributing a significant role in human nutrition, income and medicinal value. But it has not been planned to study the potential and possible opportunities of those food source. It usually referred to as “wild foods” or “famine foods”. It was indicated that in Ethiopia, there was no time when rural population has not been affected by drought, then famine. Seasonal food shortage is a common phenomenon in every part of the country, usually from July to September. On the contrary, use of wild food increased from 10% in normal year to up to 40% in famine period. Ethiopia is one of the country facing highest rates of child malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa and highly selective and restricted food consumption habit practicing in Ethiopia aggravates the problem more and more. In addition to the dietary benefits, those IVs in home garden production and development also offers employment opportunities, particularly to both urban and rural women, provide more income than staple crops per unit of land. These crops grow quickly, so they provide a fast response to emergent needs for year round food supply. Use of traditional crops is associated with cheap production methods, availability at the doorstep, adaptability to household needs and stimulation of rural and urban economics for the landless in sustainable way. In general, it is strongly believed that indigenous food plants should be considered as a serious issue when developing strategies to fight rural and urban food security in Ethiopia. Therefore, year round production and consumption of these crops are the most sustainable way of reducing and controlling poverty and micronutrient deficiencies in urban and rural poor communities.