Caption: Muluberhan Hailu, of Oxfam partner the Relief Society of Tigray, trains Adi Ha teff farmers to use a rain gauge to measure seasonal rainfall on their farms. Photo: Stephane de Messieres / Oxfam America
If you’ve ever eaten a meal at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant, as I did last weekend (thanks, Addis Red Sea!), you’ve tried teff. It’s the grain used to make injera, the spongy, slightly sour bread that serves as both plate and utensil for your food.
Oddly enough, a couple of days later I heard about teff again at work–or, to be exact, teff farmers, in the village of Adi Ha, in Tigray, Ethiopia.
Newsweek just came out with Issues 2009, a guide for President-elect Obama to tackle those few, minor problems that the world faces this year. Among the solutions is a new Oxfam project, developed in partnership with a private company and a research institute, which could serve as a model for helping poor people survive climate change.
It starts in Adi Ha, where forty percent of households rely on their income from teff, a staple grain in Ethiopia. But recent rises in temperature and decreases in rainfall, striking a region already prone to drought, have made it hard for these farmers to harvest a good crop.
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