Emergency agriculture and food security assistance to crisis affected people in Syria
Strengthening the resilience to food insecurity of crisis-affected households and communities in Eastern Aleppo Since 2011, insecurity in Syrian Arab Republic has escalated dramatically especially in governorate of Aleppo. Due to huge destruction of infrastructure and the insecure situation , many of the skilled workers have fled the country or are internally displaced in other cities, which negatively affected the production assets. However, hundreds of families are returning to East Aleppo City on a daily basis. Supporting returning vulnerable families to establish food-related micro-enterprise will alleviate the scarcity of some essential foodstuffs including protein, vitamins and fresh vegetable. Thus, reducing their dependency on food aid and even the possibility generating additional income to buy other essential food. 
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The project responds to the needs identified during meetings and discussions with stakeholders through the technical working group that FAO established under another EU funded resilience project,. Those needs were also assessed and verified by a rapid assessment conducted by FAO programme resilience officer in Aleppo. The project aims to support 3650 of the most vulnerable households among those who returned to Eastern Aleppo as well as the rural area surrounding Aleppo city to enhance their food and nutrition security and rebuild their resilience through restoring basic livelihood assets through strengthening the rural-urban linkages. The project plans to achieve this result by providing production inputs to establish small scale agriculture-based income generation activities on beekeeping, mushroom production family farming in the targeted urban and rural areas of Eastern Aleppo.
The project will include the following components:

Capacity of 3400 vulnerable households (20400 individuals) for mushroom production and processing improved
The estimated production of mushroom is 150 kg per beneficiary yearly, its estimated value is 300 USD, i.e. the total production of the beneficiaries is about 510 tons of mushroom every year, with a total value of around USD 1,000,000. 

Capacity of 250 vulnerable households (1 500 individuals) for integrated fish and vegetable/herbs production improved (as pilot project) 
Family Farming / Household vegetable production provides micronutrient rich food and is a reliable alternative to improve household food and nutrition security, and a complement to the calories provided by staple crops. In these situations, family farming is an activity that can be carried out on very limited surfaces or even without land and can provide a very useful contribution to complement the food rations distributed by other humanitarian actors.
In addition to the nutrition value of the produced vegetables, the project is expected to contribute to the overall production of almost 225 tonnes of summer vegetables (tomato, cucumber, zucchini, bean and okra) with an estimated value of about 100 000 USD. (Each farmer beneficiary expected to produce 900 kg in 400-500 square meter of land and the market value of SYP 200/kg vegetables on average). The support to be provided by FAO will be enough to allow the most vulnerable category of the affected farmers to restore their damaged livelihoods assets and sustain their food and nutrition securityCapacity for beehive and honey production improved through support to local service providers and 500 vulnerable households (3000 individuals)
The project aims at establishing community centers with a capacity of producing about 2500 kg yearly which represents about 5% of total honey production in Aleppo. The estimated value of this production is 30,000 USD, this amount could be linked with food assistant programmes of other organizations operating in Aleppo 

On the other hand, it is estimated that 1,000 beehive will be produced yearly from the targeted community centers, and will play role to support sustainable production of beehives for beekeepers which will improve their food and nutrition security and support restoring of their livelihood.