Institutional Transformation and Agricultural Development

Abstract

Social relations of production in Ethiopia’s agriculture have undergone a radical transformation in the past few years. A series of land reform measures have effectively overthrown an age-old feudal order which kept the peasantry desperately impoverished, preserved primitive cultivation practices and frittered away the surplus in wasteful consumption for the few. Today, all of Ethiopia’s estimated 7.2 million peasants are organized into about 23.5 thousand Peasants Associations, more than 5 million are members of 3679 service co-operatives and about 60 thousand have organized themselves into producers’ co-operatives. The stated objective of the government is to carry this process of transformation to its logical conclusion, that is, to full development of a collective agriculture.