Emergency agriculture assistance to vulnerable seed insecure farmers in Daykundi, Ghor and Laghman Provinces. Agriculture is the main livelihood for nearly 85 percent of the country’s population and the main livelihood for people living in rural areas, making it important in poverty reduction and food security. However, smallholder farmers in rural areas of Afghanistan are the most affected, trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, food and seed insecurity, combined with no physical and economical access to farming inputs. Declining soil fertility, increased use of marginal and fragile lands, frequency of drought and floods, 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. According to FAO’s evidence, without assistance, these farmers most affected by drought need three to five years to recover. The window of opportunity to assist farmers for the upcoming winter wheat season is very narrow and time-bound. We need to scale up our support now as the planting season starts in September. 

Through this project, FAO will address the immediate humanitarian needs of vulnerable farming families in the Daykundi, Ghor and Laghman Provinces and prevent the loss of lives as a consequence of acute food insecurity, through the provision of season-critical 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, complemented with training on good climate-smart agriculture practices, as well as awareness raising on COVID-19 safety measures. The aim of this emergency livelihoods protection intervention is to enable vulnerable smallholder farmers in the selected three 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 2021. 

The Project expects to reach 8 852 farmers households (61 964 people) with inputs sufficient to produce wheat on two jeribs of irrigated land. The wheat production from the wheat seed package should be sufficient to cover household wheat consumption needs for one year. It is also expected that this will generate income from potential surplus wheat sold in the community and local markets, which in turn will generate income and livelihoods right along the food value chain. The wheat seed package, which contains 50 kg of certified wheat seed and 100 kg of quality fertilizers (50 kg each of diammonium phosphate and urea), under normal conditions, can yield about 1.2 MT of wheat per jerib. This is expected to result in gross production of 29 105 MT of wheat in 2021.

The inputs 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 wheat seed packages to beneficiaries. FAO will be responsible for the procurement and quality control, coordination, technical supervision, technical training, 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 to clarify the mutual roles and responsibilities apart from workplans and reporting aspects.