KONSO, Ethiopia — As the first light of the morning sun breaks over the hills of Konso, Kawadaya Oldisha, 45, begins his daily routine of inspecting his terraced fields. His family’s small plot, located on the steep slopes of this UNESCO World Heritage Site in southern Ethiopia, is where they grow millet, beans and various fruits. For more than two decades, Kawadaya has relied on dry-stone terracing, a 400-year-old agricultural technique passed down through generations. It’s what has allowed the people of Konso turn their rugged, erosion-prone land into fertile fields. “It’s how we’ve survived,” Kawadaya says. “Our land is steep and rocky, but we’ve learned to make every inch count. Here, every piece of land is valuable.” In recent years, climate change has made farming more challenging for Kawadaya and other farmers in the region. Prolonged droughts have reduced crop yields, while extreme rainfall has washed away vital soil and nutrients, threatening both the land’s fertility and their livelihoods. “The land isn’t what it used to be,” Kawadaya says. “The rains are unpredictable — either too little or too much, coming too early or too late. Every year it becomes harder to grow enough food for my family.” Last year, Kawadaya lost half of his crops due to floods, and the year before, drought dried out the plants before they could even grow. Yimer Mohammed Assen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn in Germany and lead author of a…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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