Meat from cattle and sheep and grain, chiefly teff from barley, were the principal food of most of Addis Abeba’s population and it is to meat and grain, therefore, that we should turn to seek an important food market. The considerable population, which Addis Abeba early attained, must have meant that the city’s supplies of cattle, sheep, and grain were obtained from a fairly wide area, though grain would not, I think, have come from outside Shoa itself in our period. Shoa was large and fertile enough to provide the grain supplies needed for up to a population of 100,000. Transport difficulties would have been a constraint on supplies, especially honey. Cattle too, probably came from outside Shoa, as well as Shoa itself. Did Addis Abeba’s large consumption of meat and grain create a large market for these products and provide a powerful stimulus to the rise of a market economy? 

 Source: Research by David Chapple, made before the 1974 Revolution