ABSTRACT
Two important points emerge from the above facts. First, in spite of the government's policy of concentrating resources on the state farms, the urban economy remained nearly as dependent on the peasant sector for its food supply as it was in 1977/78. Second, food consumption of the peasants could not have improved much. This raises the question as to why the peasants increased their sales at such a high rate rather than increase their own consumption. The answer seems to lie in the growing regional inequalities which characterised the process of growth. Although the peasantry as a whole does not seem to have benefited from growth, a class of prosperous peasants seems to have emerged in certain parts of the country. This, in fact, is clearly suggested by the data presented in Table 7; only four regions - Gojjam, Shoa, Arssi and Gondar - accounted for nearly 86 per cent of the AMC's purchases from peasants in 1981/82.
