Emergency agriculture assistance to vulnerable seed insecure farmers in  Badakhshan, Kunduz,  Farayab, Sar-i-pul, Samangan, Daikundi, Nimroz,  Nuristan,  Helmand,  Kandahar, Bamyan, Badghis, Farah, Herat, Ghor and Wardak  provinces. Smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Afghanistan are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, food insecurity and seed insecurity coupled with no physical and economical access to farming inputs. Declining soil fertility, increased use of marginal and fragile lands, and frequency of drought and floods under climate change and variability, lack of adoption of well adapted agricultural technologies and sustainable agriculture, escalating input costs and unstable market conditions for substantial farming inputs affects profitability and sustainability of the smallholder sector. The drought in 2018 has impacted agriculture sector and smallholder farmers massively in the country. 
The seasonal food security assessment of 2019 reveals that 70% farmers in Wardak, 63.8% of farmers in Bamyan, 88.7% farmers in Nooristan, 86.6% farmers in Badakhshan, 71.9% farmers in Kunduz, 80.8% farmers in Samangan, 75.5% farmers in Sar-e-Pul, 80.4% farmers in Ghor, 80.9% farmers in Daykundi, 75.0% of farmers in Kandahar, 88.9% farmers in Faryab, 80.8% of farmers in Helmand, 52.7% farmers in Badghis, 69.6% farmers in Herat, 72.2% farmers in Farah and 94% farmers in Nimroz have no access to wheat seed for autumn 2019 cultivation. In addition, all the farmers have confirmed that they can not obtain seeds from anywhere else as well. 
Agriculture in Afghanistan provides a livelihood to approximately 70% of the population, making it important in poverty reduction and food security. The SFSA data shows that 67.5% of the farmers in Afghanistan are smallholder, having irrigated land from 2-6 jeribs. Most smallholder farmers are living in food insecurity, because of weak extension support, unavailability of quality inputs, low coping and resilience capacities and high vulnerability to disasters and shocks . 
FAO will address the immediate humanitarian needs of vulnerable farming families in these 16 provinces and prevent loss of lives as a consequence of acute food insecurity, through the provision of essential agriculture inputs, as per the FSAC recommended responses packages. FAO will work with FSAC partners to assist drought-affected families to achieve enhanced resilience to future shocks through the introduction of improved wheat seeds that are more drought-resistant, coupled with training on improved agriculture practices. The aim of this emergency livelihoods protection intervention is to enable vulnerable smallholder farmers in selected above mentioned 16 provinces to grow wheat during the upcoming season through increased access to quality agricultural inputs . This improved farmer access is expected to contribute to higher yields, household food self-sufficiency and the generation of surpluses for sale, as well as reduced gap between domestic production and consumption in 2020. 
The Project expects to reach 94,393 farmers households (660,751 individuals) with inputs sufficient to produce wheat on two jeribs irrigated land. The wheat production from the wheat seed package should be sufficient to cover household wheat consumption needs for one year. The wheat seed package, which contains 50 kg of certified wheat seed and 100 kg of quality fertilizers, under normal conditions, can yield about 1.2 MT of wheat per jerib. This is expected to result in gross production of 113,271 MT of wheat in 2020. 
The inpupts will be procured and delivered by FAO to the distribution points and handed over to the FSAC NGO partners also funded under this reserve allocation, who will distribute the seeds to beneficiaries. FAO will be responsible for the procurement and quality control, coordination, technical supervision and monitoring of the project, while NGO partners will be responsible for the selection of beneficiaries and distribution of inputs. FAO will sign Letters of Agreement with implementing partners for the inputs distribution, project monitoring, and other technical aspect of the project implementation.