“The government has shown remarkable leadership so far,” said David Del Conte, the deputy Ethiopia country director for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “They have contributed a lot of funding because they understand that support from the international community will take time to kick in.”

“But we’re still in the early stages of what we believe will be a one-year crisis,” Mr. Del Conte added. A September report from his organization projected that 15 million people could be in need of food aid in 2016.

In the meantime, farmers and herders in affected areas continue to sell off dwindling resources. And while places like Mieso do not appear at first glance to be battling drought, there are already areas where the signs of impending disaster are clear. In the Amibara area in the northeastern Afar Region, the rocky sand is littered with cattle carcasses.

“About 30 of my family’s cows died this year because there is no grass,” said the Afari animal herder Humed Kamil, 42, a father of seven who is slowly selling off his remaining animals to buy food from the market. “We’re surviving, but we’re facing a lot of problems. We don’t have milk or beef now. We only eat the corn that we buy.”

Since 2005, the government has been distributing aid through a system that delivers food to citizens in exchange for labor on development projects like construction, terracing or irrigation. Those who are not able to work are also eligible for benefits. But the last round of the program ended in July, and it will not start up again until January.

Mr. Yasin participated in the program in June, securing some cattle feed after he helped build a fence for a school. He has not received anything since, he said, contending that the government is not doing enough to help him.

While the safety-net program is on hiatus, Ethiopia and international partners are handing out emergency aid. But limited resources have forced distributors to focus on the hardest-hit areas. In Mieso, Taha Ido, 45, watched as government workers unloaded sacks of wheat not far from his home. But the food was not for him, even though his crops failed this year.