Dego Mekanen (52) is married and has 2 children, aged 21 and 14 years old. After serving in the army, he went farming on the land along the Awash River he had inherited from his father. “I currently have two different tracts of land: 0.75 hectares of irrigated land and 0.75 hectares of non-irrigated land,” he explains. Thanks to the irrigation of the land, he and his family have enough to live from. However, onion diseases and a shortage of fertilizers prevent farmer Abebech from growing further with his farm.