The new food crisis seems at the moment to be fairly controlled in Ethiopia, because television has not shown us images of dying children and women such as those terrible pictures that, 30 years ago, in 1984, caused the mercy of the inhabitants of the rich world. However, charitable organizations continue to warn that there is the greatest drought in Ethiopia in the last 50 years.

There has been no decent crop in many counties, no crop planting in the past two years. Livestock farmers who live from cattle – goats or camels – cannot feed on herbs or be satiated with water. Hunger and thirst multiply the diseases of animals and people. More than 10 million Ethiopians live in these moments of emergency, of which six million are starving.

Israeli Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn has appealed to international organizations to support Ethiopia in $1.4 billion of assistance. It's the third largest emergency in the world, except Syria, which is destroying a war, and Yemen, which is the least it needs.

In the middle of New Internationalist, Nicola Kelly, of the NGO Christian Aid, reports what was seen and heard in the villages of the Yabelo region, south of Ethiopia, 100 kilometres from the border with Kenya. He asked Sanou, the leader of Adegalchat, what they did to adapt to the situation: “With the drought we all suffer in the same way, whether they are poor or rich, and whether or not you are prepared: there is no rain. Our land dries, livestock feeds and children weaken.”

Kula Taro Wariyo invites Kelly and his companions to the cottage to eat rice with another twenty inhabitants. “Although it’s rained, it’s no longer harvested. In other times, he made big basques and the grass grew. Now the camps are going away right away,” he told them, showing them the end of the portal.

Nearby, in the village of Arero, Tume Yarco Deeda, 21, says that women suffer especially: “We have to bring water, gather firewood, cook the family, take care of the children… and more. Drought means that we have to go further in search of water, sometimes we have to be in the sun for many hours in the transport of heavy boats. Also pregnant women. I’ve met those who have given birth in the aquatic medium, imagine how dangerous it is.”

According to All Africa in an analysis, Ethiopia produces in its territory 90 per cent of the food it needs. As for cereals of great importance for food, in the 2015 harvest it raised 23 million tonnes, and did not have to import more than 1.2 million euros. Although crops have yielded little yield in the last two years, most Ethiopians manage to survive. But with a population of almost 100 million people, the fact that 15 percent of people are hungry means that there are 15 million people who are serious. 15 million Ethiopia, spread over a large part, with the logistical problems arising from the need to accompany them.

83 per cent of Ethiopians live in rural areas, making agriculture simple for the survival of their families, but climate change has increased droughts and in recent decades they have been weaker than before in the face of any problem and competition between them to get their own water, the tip of the land or the prairie.

Steal the land from the poor

In the last 50 years, Ethiopia has gone from 22.2 million inhabitants to 95.5. In 30 years, since the last major hunger in 1984, the population of Ethiopia has doubled. In addition, faithfully complying with the prescriptions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the Addis Ababa Government has promoted industrial and commercial agriculture, which has made it difficult for citizens to escape in times of crisis, temporary emigration, displacement in search of new forages, etc.

As in South Sudan and in many other humanitarian crises, it is the international organizations and NGOs that distribute emergency aid, in Ethiopia the government does so in its own right. Addis The Abeba administration sends food, sends water trucks, etc., using 38,000 people from the health services to detect and address problems.

Although Simona Foltyn, who has worked as a reporter for The Guardian in the Ogolcho region, has collected complaints from the farmers and families of the witnesses for the poor performance of his work, for the unequal distribution of aid, for not always reaching everyone, for the punishment of critics with the authorities, etc. Furthermore, the Government has strict control over the presence of foreign media and the information they make from it, knowing that to some extent it is understandable that there is an incurable tendency for Western journalists to make sensationalism in this type of crisis.

Although it is widely mentioned that most Ethiopians live from self-consumed agriculture, it is true that the Addis Ababa government has been working for some time on the strategy of selling large tracts of land to industrial agricultural multinationals and even to foreign governments, in the disaster that critics of neoliberal globalization have called land gravbing or land theft.

The well-known GRAIN organization has long complained that Ethiopia is one of the favorite predators of corporations that want to get the food chain around the world, mainly the region of Ganbella, which is famous for good land.

The Government of Gambella sold 10,000 hectares of land to Prince Sheikh Mohamed Al-Amoudi of Saudi Arabia to produce benefits for his rich country of origin, on condition that he sells 40 per cent of the harvest in Ethiopia.

The government sold 100,000 hectares of land to Karuturi, India, a much larger territory. It expelled thousands of families from the ethnic groups Anuak, Mezenger, Nuer, Opo and Komo from those lands for governments to gather them all in the villages expressly organized for them; many have reached the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

The theft was agreed in 2012 between the owner of Karuturi and the authorities in Addis Ababa and the Civil Guard. Before turning four in February 2016, the Government had to suspend treatment because Karuturi has not put more than 1,200 of those 100,000 hectares into production.

Following the paradoxical forced collectivization driven by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Karuturi will leave in Ethiopia thousands of hectares of bustling forests, thousands of refugees and many more than before the melting of El Niño.