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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 and 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.

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STNMTZ_20201109_2238.TIF
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George Steinmetz
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www.georgesteinmetz.com
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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 and 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.<br /> <br /> 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.

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