(The Jerusalem Post): Getana is an independent farmer working a little plot of land in the hinterlands of the Butajira area of Ethiopia, 130 kilometers south of the capital Addis Ababa, and a large portion of a world far from Israel. However his prospering yield of tomatoes, onions and stew peppers, set against an emerald scene of verdant fields and timberland secured mountains, is profiting enormously from ability and innovation created in the Jewish state.
Through a test case program subsidized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), seven ranchers have been given trickle water system frameworks delivered in Israel, having themselves put resources into the program.
During a visit to his fields, Getana speaks about the benefits the new irrigation system has brought him, and its advantages over the ancient method of flooding fields with water that many Ethiopian farmers still use. It saves him money on diesel fuel since he now needs to pump much less water than he used to; reduces the amount of fertilizer he uses; and reduces his labor costs since the new system also delivers the fertilizer directly to the field and does so more efficiently than before.
This project is one of three agricultural programs being run by Jewish and Israeli organizations in the Butajira district that were highlighted during the recent state visit of President Reuven Rivlin to Ethiopia earlier this month.
Rivlin’s visit was hailed as a groundbreaking venture in not just combining diplomatic and business interests, but also for advancing international development cooperation and assistance and bringing together Jewish and Israeli development organizations to heighten the impact of aid efforts in the country.
One of the central organizations involved in bringing approximately 20 such groups to Ethiopia for the president’s visit was OLAM, an umbrella body for Jewish international development organizations. OLAM’s work is focused on maximizing the impact of resources invested by Jewish and Israeli development organizations by fostering collaboration and cooperation when they are working in the same region. It was the Society for International Development Israel that largely initiated this focus of Rivlin’s trip, and it asked OLAM to invite relevant organizations to participate.
ETHIOPIA HAS become something of a focus for Jewish and Israeli aid groups in recent years, and for several reasons. Such groups have been present in the country for some time due to the presence of the local Jewish community and the efforts to help them emigrate to Israel and assist them in situ as well.
OLAM executive director Dyonna Ginsburg says that because of the Ethiopian Jewish community and the significant number of Ethiopian Jews who now live in Israel, the two countries now have deep connections enhanced by a strong national Ethiopian narrative that its people are the descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
Like JDC, Fair Planet, another of OLAM’s partners in the agricultural sector, has also been achieving impressive results in Ethiopia. It works with international companies that produce hybrid crop seeds and helps identify the varieties that grow well in a particular region and its conditions, including climate, local crop diseases and pests, and other factors.
Once the organization identifies appropriate seeds for a particular region, it provides seedlings grown from those seeds free of charge for trial plantings by small-holder farmers for an area of 1,000 square meters. If the new crop is a success and the farmers wish to continue using the hybrid seeds, they are required to buy new seedlings but continue to benefit from Fair Planet’s training programs, in which its employees and volunteers teach the farmers about correctly preparing the land for the seeds and how to fertilize and water them.
During a visit to a test field in the Butajira district, Mitiku, a farmer who has been using Fair Planet seedlings, spoke of how he had increased his yield of cash-crop tomatoes five times over and more than doubled his annual income.
Eshel Lev-Or, a full-time Fair Planet employee in Ethiopia, says the use of hybrid seeds constitutes a real revolution in agricultural practice and allows farmers to break out of their subsistence- farming practices and begin to earn income, which helps break the poverty cycle.
Fair Planet has worked directly with some 950 small-holder farmers, but, says Lev-Or, approximately 16,000 are now using hybrid seeds because news of their success spread widely by word of mouth. He adds that some farmers are reporting that the steady income provided by increased yields means they can now afford to send their children to school.
“It is sad that in 2018, our technology means that we have in Israel such an abundance of produce that 40% of it ends up in the trash, while there are people here for whom a tomato plant grows just five tomatoes,” he says. “Our goal is to bring and share this abundance and knowledge, and we can see the impact we’re having in helping take people out of the poverty cycle.”
Talking more broadly about the role of the Jewish state and the Jewish world in international development, Ginsburg, who was part of the delegation to Ethiopia, says that in recent years, a paradigm shift has taken place that might not be fully recognized, appreciated and internalized.
“Today’s Jewish community is blessed with unprecedented resources and is the most affluent ever,” she says. “We have a sovereign State of Israel, there are very few Jewish communities under repressive regimes, and many Jewish communities are very privileged and have power that is unprecedented in Jewish history – and with that comes a sense of responsibility.”
ISRAEL, FOR understandable reasons, has in recent years been something of a laggard in its budget for international development; even today, it allocates just 0.07% of its GDP toward its aid budget, one of the lowest in the OECD.
Ginsburg points out, however, that this was not always the case, and that many of the country’s founding figures such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin were ardent advocates for the Jewish state to provide assistance to developing countries, even at a time when Israel itself was akin to such nations, mired in wars with neighbors while absorbing large numbers of immigrants and facing food shortages.
It began fostering ties and providing assistance to numerous countries in Africa and South America through MASHAV, the Foreign Ministry’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, established in 1958. It later became a leader in the field. But the Yom Kippur War in 1973 had a drastic effect on Israel’s ties to Africa in particular, with Arab countries pressuring numerous sub-Saharan nations to cut diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, a phenomenon that led in turn to Israel slashing its foreign aid budget.
That budget has never fully recovered, and a perspective took root that the country’s own requirements should take precedence over those of others.
Although its aid budget remains low, Ginsburg says the knowledge and expertise in different fields that Israel does provide is a uniquely valuable and critical contribution that is widely appreciated in African countries where Israeli and Jewish groups are present, and that “Israel’s added value to the field of international development is not measured in actual dollars.”
She remains hopeful that the government will begin to raise the funding it provides for international development.
Ginsburg also refers to what is often seen in Israel as a zero-sum game of budgetary allocations, and describes the Talmudic statement that “the poor of your city come first” as a “knee-jerk reaction” of Israelis to international development. She argues that this notion was never meant to exclude poor people farther afield, but rather to prioritize charitable giving, and says that helping developing countries is very much an important Jewish value.
She adds that investing in stronger ties in the developing world is not merely good for those in severe poverty, it helps Israel strategically, economically and politically.
“Part of what shifted 70 years ago when the state was established was that for the fist time since the destruction of the Second Temple, the Jewish people had at its disposal engines of statecraft to do good on a broader scale,” she concludes. “We are doing a lot, and can do a lot more.”
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Hayfield secondary school is one of the known public school in Virginia.Most Ethiopian and Eritrean parents send their children to this high school.
Henerable Dr. Maritu Legesse was one of the member of Wollo Lalibela cultural music band which had a wide acceptance in the 1970s. She is widely known as a queen of Ambassel muisc which is one of the four music kignits of Ethiopian music (Ambasel, Anchehoye, Batti and Tizita).
Professor Emeritus Abiyi Ford then launched into a new chapter of his life, returning to Ethiopia to contribute to national initiatives to expand and
Howard University colleague and friend. Professor Ford reactivated talks with the Canadian Film Institute in Quebec, building lasting institutional partnerships to provide support for the creation of a film program.
He would pack his heavy drums and head to Washington DC’s Malcom X Park jam sessions, reveling in the Cuban, Caribbean and West African mix of sounds and communities. For decades, he hosted a steady gathering of musicians, poets and artists in the basement of his home in Fort Washington, and later in his studio in Addis. His joy of playing melodies on the piano, or working our complex rhythms on his conga and djemb drums was palatable,and complemented his easy going nature and ability to find excitement in the moment.
LEGACY: Abiyi’s storied legacy begins with his parents. In the 19203, his father Rabbi Arnold Josiah Ford was a noted activist in Marcus Mossiah Garvey’s Pan-African movement and a prominent member of the black Jewish community in Harlem. He served as musical director of the Universal Negro Improvement Association founded by Garvey, and heeded the movement’s ‘Back to Africa’ call to arrive in Ethiopia and perform for Emperor Haile Sellassie’s coronation in 1930. Mignon Ford arrived one year later to work as secretary on Rabbi Ford’s ongoing projects and they married soon after. Rabbi Ford fell ill and died on the eve of the second Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, but not before he made his wife promise to stay and share the fate of their adopted homeland.
” COMMUNITY: The Ford family ethos was an inclusive one that embraced and celebrated all aspects of African cultures and identities. From their first sojourn across the oceans to their remarkable contributions across generations, Mignon, Arnold, Yosef and Abiyi have built community wherever they have set down roots. Rabbi Ford nurtured communities of faith and activism, dedicating his life to the betterment of his beloved Promised Land, Ethiopia. Beyond her role as educator, Mrs. Ford was mother to many young Ethiopians whom she raised as family members. As social justice advocate, Yosef worked to alleviate the hardships of relocation for Ethiopian refugees and immigrants in the United States. As scholar and educator, Abiyi generously contributed decades of his knowledge and expertise to building academic institutions and programs for Africans at home and in the diaspora, mentoring students, and sharing creative space with filmmakers, musicians, poets and painters. Abiyi has continued to forward the legacy of Pan-Africanism through the Mignon Ford Foundation established to memorialize the life and work of his morher in Ethiopia.
