Harvesting barley and teff in the Amhara Highlands of Ethiopia. These grains thrive at altitudes from 7-11,000 ft., and are cut by hand with a scythe, then threshed by trampling the cuttings with cattle and donkeys, then winnowed by tossing in the air with forked sticks. Most villages now have a diesel-powered grinding machine to make flour, and villagers pay for that by weight.
Some 90% of Ethiopia's 110 million people are small-scale agriculturalists, with scarcely any cash crop for income or access to electricity and plumbing. But change is coming rapidly, with new hydro-electric dams and one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa.