Food Security and Resilience Building in Ethiopia The severity of food insecurity in Ethiopia is among the worst globally, with record-breaking food assistance (estimated 20 million people) needs in 2022.  By early 2023, multiple areas of the country were facing extremely poor nutritional outcomes associated with high levels of acute malnutrition and hunger-related mortality. Chronic food insecurity takes a severe toll on the health of all household members, and research suggests that women and girls suffer the most. When communities are forced to use coping mechanism, such as reduction of food ration size and meal frequency, children, women, the elderly and disable people are the most affected segments of the community. Subsistence agriculture livelihood of the people in these area is affected by recurrent drought, conflict and other interlinked factors. As a result they are food  insecure and most of the people are supported by PSNP and they are the target of disaster relief programs in the past years due to food shortages.

Vulnerable women and youths lack resource and skills to diversify their livelihood.  Agro-pastoralists and farmers are heavily dependent on livestock and crop. This strong dependence on one source of income makes them extremely vulnerable and food insecure. They lack the resource; and organizational and technical capacity to recover and improve their productivity. The poor and vulnerable are not getting the agricultural inputs and technology to ensure household food security. They lack the knowledge and skills and resource to buy improved farm and livestock inputs, which could enable them cope with recurrent drought and recover from the conflict  impacts.  In the proposed district, crop yields are principally limited by: low amount and uneven distribution of rainfall; lack of agricultural production enhancement technologies such as improved varieties of drought tolerant, disease resistant and high yielding crops; lack of irrigation development ; degradation of  soil fertility, and pests and lose in past harvest

Moreover, the agricultural resource base  ( soil, vegetation, biodiversity, pasture ) of the districts is severely degraded and makes the community very vulnerable to drought and other natural and man-made hazards. Based on the need assessment conducted,  forest patches and bushes were degraded due to population pressure and agricultural expansion, and poverty which leads the people to maladaptation (cutting tree for selling of charcoal and  firewood ) as a survival and coping strategy. This implies that the adaptation capacity of the target people to climate change and  extreme weather events  is very low. In addition to this, the Soil is severely degraded and cultivated lands are denuded.. The inappropriate land use system & cultivation practices, & lack of soil and water conservation measures coupled with the bio-physical nature of the area (devoid of vegetation cover, rugged terrain, steep slope) and the ongoing climate change have resulted in server degradation of cultivated lands and reducing fertility and water holding capacity of the soil which in turn to reduce crop and pasture yields General :  The overall objective of the project is to contribute to Argobba communities' food security  and resilience building to shocks and crises

Specific objectives: 

SO.-1  The livelihoods and food security of the targeted communities are enhanced.

SO -2.  Target communities' adaptive capacity to climate change is enhanced Beneficiaries of the project will be selected among the poor and vulnerable farmers and Agropastoral, youth (females and males), women and men, poor female headed households, PLW and elders. The project will work with 1519 households and a total of 9,114 vulnerable people (4,739 will be females and 4,375 are males). will directly benefit from the proposed project. Additionally 18,228 individuals will also benefit indirectly bringing the number of direct plus indirect beneficiaries 27,342 people