Qobo in North Wello of the Amhara Regional State is where Admassie Tikuye, a farmer, has lived his whole life. He harvests up to five quintals of barley, millet, and oats annually from a few hectares of land he inherited from his forefathers. When conflict erupted a year ago between the federal government and armed forces in Tigray Regional State, Admassie was wary but never thought it would directly affect him.

The conflict engulfed his village and areas hundreds of kilometres southbound to the capital in less than a year. He, and four of his children, fled from Qobo a month ago, finding refuge in Dessie, 160Km from his home. They found shelter in Addis Fana School, one of the government-run temporary shelters housing hundreds of thousands of people in the Regional State.

Dessie, too, alongside Combolcha, fell to the hands of the armed forces in Tigray last week. But Admassie was hoping to move to Addis Abeba, where one of his daughters lives.

"I'll try to go there," he told Fortune.

Admassie is one of the 407,000 smallholder farmers in Qobo and the surrounding area of the North Wello region known for producing cereals such as teff, wheat and sorghum. Last year, the area harvested 5.1 million quintals of these crops, accounting for close to five percent of total production in the Amhara region. This is likely to plummet this year as one of the many consequences of the civil war raging in the country.

The loss of lives, economic shock, widespread hunger, disease and destruction of property are among the long list of calamities left in the wake of the fighting between the federal army and its allies in the Amhara region against the military forces in Tigray. As time goes on, more is added to the list of this grim and alarming state. The most recent is the devastating effects the war has had on agricultural output. The sheer scale is even more startling, considering agriculture accounts for 35pc of Ethiopia`s gross domestic product (GDP).

It is the only means of livelihood for nearly 80pc of the population. More than 15 million smallholder farmers like Admassie are engaged in the production of cereals, harvesting close to 13 million hectares of land. According to officials from the regional state, the war left close to 300,000ht of land in the Amhara region unploughed this year. This includes 67 weredas in the regional state, where Admassie and untold numbers of farmers are displaced.

In two zones of Afar Regional State, constituting 14 weredas, 17,000ht of land was not cultivated as over half a million people were displaced, according to Esayas Lemma, director of crop development at the Ministry of Agriculture.

“The major causes for the loss of crops is looting of agricultural inputs, harvested products and the inability of farmers to tend to their farmlands as they are displaced,” Esayas told Fortune. "Those cultivated are left vulnerable to weeds, flooding and disease."

A loss of 14.5 million quintals of crops (13pc of annual production) is projected in Amhara Regional State alone, according to a report from the Ministry of Agriculture. Esayas points out that the farmers themselves will be the worst affected by the developments, as close to 75pc of the output is a product of subsistence farming.

The situation in Tigray is as bleak.

Cultivating close to one million hectares of land, farmers in Tigray produce 20 million quintals of crops annually. However, officials of the Agriculture Ministry have little to no information about farming in the regional state ever since the armed forces in Tigray controlled much of the region in July this year. Neither is the fate of 150 million Br worth of seeds and fertiliser distributed last year to farmers in Tigray known to officials of the Ministry.

"We're considering outputs from Tigray as a total loss," said Esayas. "We're not expecting anything anymore."

This has led to a growing fear among those following agricultural productivity in Ethiopia that last year's harvest of 341 million quintals of grain will be unattainable. A third of this crop came from the warn-torn Amhara and Tigray regional states, the latter accounting for six percent of national grain production. As the war spills over farther into Northern Shoa, millions of quintals of crops are at risk of loss.