By Mike Wooldridge
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News, Mekelle, Ethiopia
**The Ethiopian government is expected to confirm later that it needs emergency food aid for 6.2 million people.**This is because of the effects of prolonged drought and erratic rains on crops and grazing for livestock.
The UN’s World Food Programme is already facing a shortfall of more than $85m (£50m) worth of food for Ethiopia to the end of this year.
Aid agency Oxfam has called for a new approach to tackling the risk of disaster in the country.
‘Total wipe-out’
It has been hit by the food crisis affecting a large part of East Africa and the Horn.
Fields of maize, burnt and withered by the sun, are the evidence of an emerging crisis.
In both the hardest-hit south of Ethiopia and in places here in the north, farmers have told me they face a total wipe-out of their harvests.
Some said they planned to sell their livestock, so damaging their livelihoods further.
In a report marking 25 years since the famine that killed around one million Ethiopians, Oxfam said that imported food aid saves lives now but does little to help communities withstand the next shock.
It called for more investment in building resilience to disasters.