ITHACA, N.Y. -- The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded $10 million to a four-institution consortium that includes Cornell University to build agricultural research and extension services in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to alleviate the nation's chronic hunger, poverty and disease.

Over the next five years, the consortium plans to build institutional research and extension capacity in agriculture, natural-resource management, micro-finance and micro-enterprise development in the country's Amhara region. Officially, the program is called Assisting the Shift in Paradigms in Agricultural Research and Extension in Ethiopia (ASPIRE).

The lead institution in the consortium is Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Other members, besides Cornell, are Virginia State University and Agricultural Cooperatives Development International/Volunteers for Overseas Cooperative Assistance, a nongovernmental organization.

Agriculture, mainly coffee beans, is the backbone of the Ethiopian economy and is responsible for approximately half of the country's gross domestic product, 90 percent of exports and 85 percent of employment, says James E. Haldeman, Cornell senior associate director of international programs in the university's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "Ethiopia's agricultural sector is driven by the subsistence strategies of small-holder farmers and their families," he says.

In Amhara National Regional State, one of Ethiopia's 11 administrative divisions, Haldeman notes, the rural poor account for about 90 percent of the 16 million inhabitants. (Ethiopia's total population is nearly 66 million.) "The catalog of interrelated agricultural and natural resource constraints facing this population -- deforestation, overgrazing, population pressures, unabated soil erosion, declining soil fertility, denuded lands and inefficient water conservation -- is daunting," says Haldeman."Alarming levels of environmental degradation, poor nutritional status and rising levels of HIV/AIDS infection severely diminish households' abilities to take advantage of good crop and livestock years. This undermines their resilience to food shocks," he says.

In targeting Amhara, one of the most chronically food-insecure areas of Ethiopia, project workers will use two satellite links to connect them with faculty at Cornell and at the main agricultural university in Ethiopia. The educational components of the program will include study tours and distance-learning courses.

Tammo Steenhuis, Cornell professor of biological and environmental engineering, will lead the project's watershed management strategy, which will seek to achieve food security for the Amhara region while protecting the environment through sustainable land use. Ethiopians will be directly involved in decision-making through community watershed management organizations.

Also working on the project from Cornell are: Robert Blake, professor, animal science; Louise Buck, senior extension associate, natural resources; Daniel Brown, associate professor, animal science; Ralph Christy, professor, applied economics and management; Ronnie Coffman, professor and chair, plant breeding; Helene Dillard, associate director, Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva; John Duxbury, professor, crop and soil sciences; Erick Fernandes, assistant professor, crop and soil sciences; Margaret Kroma, assistant professor, education; Chuck Geisler, professor, rural sociology; Kassa Habtemariam, graduate student; Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor, crop and soil sciences; Ben Okumu, research associate, applied economics and management; Alice Pell, professor, animal science; Max Pfeffer, director, Center for the Environment; Dawit Solomon, researcher, crop and soil sciences; Hailu Tefera, researcher, plant breeding; Peter Trutmann, international programs; Terry Tucker, international programs; Mike Walter, professor and chair, biological and environmental engineering; and Norman Uphoff, international programs.

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