I don’t know if anyone else has thought about this, but lately I’ve been thinking about agricultural development, and one thing I keep getting stuck on is livestock, especially cattle.

In Oromo culture, and in many communities across East Africa, cattle aren’t just a source of food. They’re tied to ritual, heritage, wealth, family, and a long relationship built over time. Slaughter was never something done casually or at scale. Even today, it’s usually connected to ceremonies or necessity, not everyday consumption.

I understand the pressure around food security and the idea of increasing meat production, if that’s where things are heading. But I feel genuinely uneasy imagining our cattle becoming anonymous units for mass consumption, whether domestically or exported live to be slaughtered elsewhere. It might sound illogical to some people, but the idea of exporting them just for that really hurts me. It feels like a loss without closure, and I’m not even sure how to explain it properly.

I want Ethiopia to be a modern country. I’m not against development. I just keep wondering how we modernise agriculture or a meat industry without losing the meaning we’ve always attached to livestock.

Does anyone else feel this too?