Opening remarks by the Director of the Near East and North Africa Division
Over the past few years, the world has witnessed unprecedented price increases for food grains, commodities and fuel, and prices are expected to remain high in the foreseeable future. The higher cost of food can set back poverty reduction efforts by many years and devastate the world’s poor people, many of whom spend as much as 80 per cent of their income on food. The rural poor, in particular, are hard hit. Many smallholder farmers are not able to benefit from the higher prices because of lack of access to the now more-expensive inputs, limited access to markets and undeveloped infrastructure.
Many of the countries in the Near East and North Africa region rely heavily on imports to satisfy their food needs. Soaring food and input prices have not only worsened the socio-economic conditions of poor people, but threaten to further decrease the ability of many countries to meet the food needs of their populations. Rural poor people – many of whom are absolute or net food buyers – are very likely to become poorer unless a combination of short- and long-term measures is promptly implemented. In the short term, it is essential to help farmers increase food production for the next cropping season. In the medium and long term, a sustained increase in investments in agricultural development, particularly in the smallholder sector, is crucial to achieving a substantial and sustainable level of food security.
IFAD’s investments in the NENA region have traditionally focused on supporting the medium-term efforts of governments to increase food production and to help small farmers adapt to drought, water scarcity and climate change. IFAD will continue to increase its financing of agricultural and rural development programmes by 10 per cent per year over the next five years. In the short run, moreover, IFAD will make resources available from existing NENA loans and grants to provide an immediate boost to agricultural production. Such short-term measures are currently being formulated within the ongoing country programmes of the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen in order to maximize food crop production by smallholders in 2008 and 2009. In response to government requests, IFAD is reprogramming its loans and grants to assist smallholders in responding quickly and positively to higher prices by speeding up input supply, including distribution of seeds and technical packages, and by enhancing access to rural finance.
This issue of Rural Echoes is devoted to emerging initiatives by IFAD and governments in the NENA region to respond to the challenge of soaring food prices.
Mona Bishay
Director, Near East and North Africa Division
Saudi Arabia leads the way in strengthening IFAD’s financial base
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced its contribution of US$50 million to the Eighth Replenishment of IFAD’s resources. It thus became the first IFAD Member State to pledge resources to this Replenishment. The announcement was made by Saudi Arabia’s Permanent Representative to IFAD, His Excellency Bandar Bin Shalhoub, during a two-day Replenishment Consultation meeting in Rome, 22-23 April 2008, attended by representatives of IFAD’s Member States. This contribution is a fivefold increase over Saudi Arabia’s US$10 million contribution to the Seventh Replenishment of IFAD’s resources in 2005.
Welcoming the announcement, IFAD President Lennart Båge expressed his “gratitude to His Majesty King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, for this gesture of strong support to IFAD’s mission to increase food production through higher investment in agriculture in developing countries, particularly in the context of meeting the challenge of the present global food crisis.”
In the light of these new challenges and the urgency of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, IFAD is reviewing its programme of work for the period 2010-2012 and is assessing its financial requirements in consultation with Member States. The Fund is proposing to increase the programme of work to US$3 billion to help meet new demands and increase its impact on food availability and the livelihoods of rural poor people. President Båge expressed the hope that Saudi Arabia’s increased contribution would inspire other Member States to consider increasing their contributions.
With this new contribution pledge, Saudi Arabia’s total pledged contributions to IFAD’s resources since the agency’s establishment in 1977 amount to US$440 million.
IFAD and Qatar to enhance their partnership and cooperation
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| President Båge (left) during his meeting with HE Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bih Khalifa Al-Thani, Minister for Municipal Affairs and Agriculture. | |
IFAD President Lennart Båge paid an official visit to Qatar on 26-28 March 2008. During the visit he met with His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar, and held talks with His Excellency Sheikh Abdul Rahman Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Minister for Municipal Affairs and Agriculture.
Both the Emir and the Minister expressed Qatar’s strong support and commitment to further enhancing its cooperation with IFAD. President Båge thanked His Highness, the Emir, for Qatar’s strong support and for the leadership role played by Qatar in helping strengthen IFAD’s capacity to tackle the challenges facing rural poor people in developing countries.
During the meeting, His Highness expressed concern for rising food prices and their impact on poor people in these countries. The need for greater investment in agriculture and food production in response to high and rising demand – by allocating a greater share of official development assistance (ODA) to the agriculture sector – was discussed during the meeting. ODA for this sector decreased from 18 per cent in 1979 to 2.9 per cent in 2006.
His Highness highlighted his country’s efforts to help poor farmers, including support for farmers in Mauritania, the Sudan and other countries. Initiatives such as long-term buying contracts between Qatari firms and farmer groups have been explored. Ways of tackling the issues more globally were discussed at the meeting, including through IFAD’s work as the only United Nations organization and international financial institution devoted exclusively to financing rural poverty reduction through agricultural and rural development.
Assuming a successful outcome of the Eighth Replenishment of IFAD’s resources, the Fund plans to invest US$3 billion in projects worth US$6 billion over the period 2010-2012. Higher aid to agricultural development is crucial, not only to achieving the first Millennium Development Goal – of halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 – but also to increasing productivity to meet the rising demand for agricultural commodities. Achieving this higher investment will very much depend on political will. In this context, President Båge praised the country’s commitment to supporting development assistance and expressed the hope that Qatar might significantly increase its contribution to IFAD's Eighth Replenishment.
Reviewing bilateral issues, the two sides discussed cooperation between IFAD and Qatar. This cooperation includes IFAD’s recent grant to Qatar’s Regional Centre for Plant Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the training of Qatari nationals in the management of agricultural development projects (through IFAD-supported capacity-building programmes) and the cofinancing of IFAD projects, including those in member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
During his visit, President Båge also toured the second edition of Qatar’s International Agricultural Exhibition and highly praised the progress made in developing Qatar’s own agriculture sector.
Regional Themes
The challenge of food security and IFAD’s thematic priorities in the Near East and North Africa
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| A rural family in the province of Minya, Egypt consuming a poor meal after a day of hard work on its small farm. | |
The global price surge is generally attributed, among other causes, to the sharp decline of world cereal production in the period 2004-2006, the current record low stocks of cereals, increased production of biofuels, changes in diet that have led to greater demand for cereals in some countries (for example China) and very high fertilizer and transportation costs, which many small agricultural producers cannot afford. In spite of the large increases in food production realized in 2007 and projected for 2008, prices of food commodities over the next 10 years are likely to remain higher than during the previous 10 years.
At the regional level, the combined effect of economic and demographic growth under drought and water-scarcity conditions is further decreasing the food self-sufficiency of Arab countries and increasing their reliance on imported foods. The last food balance sheet of the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development reflects a decrease in cereal production of 3.5 million tonnes from 2003 to 2005. The value of food exports from Arab countries was about 23.6 per cent of food imports, which totalled US$23.3 billion in 2005.
According to a recent IFAD-funded study covering 13 low- and middle-income NENA countries, about 66 per cent of the total cropped area in the region is dedicated to grain crops, compared with a world average of 46 per cent.
However, cereal crop production, which is mainly rainfed, has low productivity in NENA. For example, wheat, which is the preferred crop (occupying 29 per cent of the total cropped area), has average yields of 2.26 tonnes per hectare. This is 22 per cent lower than the world average and is mainly due to the nature of the farming systems, which suffer from water scarcity, poor soils, and inadequate management practices, infrastructure and know-how. Productivity improvement in the agriculture sector is therefore crucial to improving the food security of millions of rural poor people, who depend mainly on agriculture for their livelihoods.
Simultaneously, economic growth in recent years has not kept pace with high population growth rates, resulting in rising unemployment in most of the region. Unemployment has particularly affected young entrants to the job market, especially in rural areas. With 58 per cent of the population under the age of 25, and overall unemployment rates at 14.3 per cent, the Arab Labour Organization indicates that this percentage is increasing by 1 per cent per year and is added to what is called masked unemployment. In spite of this, in 2004 agriculture provided employment for 37.8 per cent of the active population, according to the World Bank, and has the potential to employ more people and produce more food if increased investments are channelled to the sector and a better policy environment is provided.
IFAD’s investments in agricultural and rural development in the region have focused on increasing food production and employment of rural youth, while helping small farmers adapt to climate change, drought and water scarcity. In Egypt, for example, IFAD’s West Noubaria Rural Development Project – launched in 2002 on land reclaimed from desert and distributed among unemployed landless people and young couples – is helping its participants engage in productive income-generating activities.
The project supports the adoption of better on-farm water management practices, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in agricultural production and marketing, and the hosting of commercial services. It provides marketing extension services and information and improves marketing infrastructure. Moreover, it facilitates the long-term development of a viable rural financial system, while addressing the immediate needs of agricultural production and financing of the enterprises. The project builds on an earlier intervention, IFAD’s Newlands Agricultural Services Project, which helped establish new settlements (35,000 households) and profitable farming systems, including the efficient use of water, in an area of 188,000 feddans in the three adjacent districts of West Noubaria, El Bustan and Sugar Beet. Most of these new farmers have made great progress in becoming market suppliers of food products, including organic products with some exports to European supermarkets.
Replicating, on a large scale, the many successful innovations introduced to diversify and intensify food production under harsh climatic conditions can ensure greater impact in terms of food security, income generation and employment opportunities for young people. However, such replication requires greater investment in agriculture. Regretfully, few data are available to quantify the volume of agricultural investment in the NENA region over the past eight years. According to the IFAD-funded study mentioned earlier, the net average government spending/investment in agriculture in NENA declined from a high annual average of US$6.1 billion in 1986-1990 to US$1.9 billion in 1996-2000. Low public investment in rural areas has a significant negative impact on private investment as well. Potential private investors in the NENA region are largely discouraged from investing in rural areas. This is due to a number of factors, including poor infrastructure (water, sanitation, heating, electricity, rural roads and communications), insufficient availability of local skills and inadequate access to rural finance.
Against these trends, IFAD’s Near East and North Africa Division will increase its financing of agricultural and rural development programmes by 10 per cent per year over the next five years. It has already invested more than US$1.4 billion in 110 projects, helping some 30 million rural poor people obtain access to land, water, financial services, markets and technology. IFAD-funded projects in the region focus increasingly on national development priorities. These include expanding access to rural finance, increasing the employment of rural youth, linking small growers of non-traditional crops with domestic and international markets, improving the management of land and water resources, and reducing vulnerability to water scarcity and climate change.
However, much more is needed – in terms of both short-term help to farmers in the next cropping season and long-term investment in agricultural development – if we are to achieve a substantial and sustainable regional level of food security. IFAD has already accelerated its help to small farmers in accessing agricultural technology and inputs for the next cropping season. And the recent signals from Gulf States are encouraging, such as Kuwait’s pledge to provide US$100 million to fund food production in low-income Islamic countries. However, far more resources are needed. A significant supply response from the region depends to a large extent on the will of governments to rapidly increase investment in rural infrastructure and market institutions in order to reduce constraints on access to agricultural inputs. In the long term, investment in agricultural science and technology by national research systems could play a key role in facilitating greater production in response to the rise in prices and could unleash the sector’s potential to help reduce rural poverty.
For further information, contact: [email protected].
Unions of Arab farmers participate in IFAD’s Farmers’ Forum
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| One of the global consultation sessions of the Farmers' Forum. | |
The Farmers’ Forum was constituted in 2002 as part of IFAD’s efforts to ensure the active participation of grass-roots organizations in policy dialogue and in the development of programmes and projects that respond to the real needs of the poorest rural communities. The 2008 session, which was opened by the President of IFAD, Lennart Båge, addressed a large number of issues:
- trends and developments in partnerships between IFAD and farmers’ and rural producers’ organizations (FOs)
- progress achieved and future goals of IFAD/FO partnerships
- feedback from regional working groups on general directions and the scope of IFAD/FO partnerships
- access to land, with a focus on trends, challenges and opportunities, and the role and perspectives of FOs
- FO experiences and lessons learned in engagement with, and influence over, policy processes regarding smallholder family agriculture
- climate change and smallholder agriculture from FOs’ perspectives
Regional working sessions were held during the two-day forum. Mona Bishay, Director of the Near East and North Africa Division, addressed the NENA session, discussing the IFAD Strategic Framework 2007-2010 and the Farmers’ Forum process. Participants introduced themselves, explaining how the organizations they represent were created, their goals, specialized fields of work, main activities, membership and areas of collaboration with IFAD.
The floor was opened for discussion, with a focus on participants’ recommendations regarding their future cooperation with IFAD. Ahmad Al Faour, President of JFU, noted that “agriculture is simply not quite as popular as it has been in the past.” He said: “Agriculture is something that you do if you must. Obviously, we cannot deny that agriculture is a very important sector, because it is to agriculture that we owe our very survival. To neglect agriculture will have very negative consequences on the economy, much worse than any war.”
Al Faour took the opportunity of his participation in the forum to meet IFAD’s President, and as an expression of strong partnership and cooperation between IFAD and Jordan’s small farmers, Al Faour presented the President with the JFU medal.
On the subject of the financing of productive activities, participants asked IFAD to finance FOs directly through grants so that they can develop their own activities. They also proposed that IFAD provide loan financing to FOs when the organizations have the financial and administrative capacity to manage them. The need for capacity-building and training of small-scale producers and their organizations was emphasized – lack of suitable training was seen as limiting the capability of rural producers to improve their livelihoods. The group also affirmed the need to preserve and promote indigenous and nomadic peoples’ knowledge of natural resource management, and to acknowledge their contribution to the conservation of biodiversity. The group observed that this knowledge could be a basis for the promotion of organic farming, which has yet to be developed in spite of its potential. This was also seen as a response to the challenges posed by climate change, which participants cited as a major concern, and they called on IFAD to support them in engaging in organic agriculture. The group discussed the need for agricultural research and the development of accessible technologies that could be disseminated throughout the region. In fact, unsuitable technological practices were seen as one of the main constraints on increasing the quantity and quality of production so that producers could compete in an open market.
Participants also discussed the important role of women in agriculture, as well as the role of pastoralists and herders in the regional economy. They sought IFAD support to enable these groups to be represented at all levels of decision-making processes and to engage in leadership roles. Other thematic issues addressed by the group were climate change, the rise in food and fuel prices, and access to and management of natural resources. The group concluded by highlighting its support for Palestinian farmers and those farmers working in the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
The regional session concluded with agreement on an outline for the future cooperation framework between IFAD and farmers’ organizations in NENA.
For further information, contact: [email protected].
Country Programme features
Jordan calls on IFAD to help her country face an unprecedented rise in food prices
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| President Båge (right) during his meeting with HRH Princess Wijdan Fawaz Al Hashemi, Ambassador of Jordan to Italy. | |
Princess Wijdan noted that IFAD was working actively to address a priority concern of Jordan and of all developing and food-deficit countries in the world: the unprecedented rise in food prices that has continued to accelerate in recent months. The princess said that the increases had challenged the country’s economy, and had placed added strain on households concentrated in Jordan’s pockets of poverty. Food prices have increased by about 30 per cent in Jordan over the last two months.
The Government of Jordan is therefore seeking to provide targeted assistance to impoverished households. However, the Government itself is facing increasing budgetary pressure from higher fuel prices and from Jordan’s absorption of migrants and refugees from Iraq. The latter situation has also resulted in increased demand and pressure on Jordan’s scarce water supply. As a result, governmental resources are necessarily directed towards the social sector, at a time when investment in agriculture is critically needed for local food production and for poverty reduction.
Her Royal Highness invited IFAD to take into account these specific challenges in assessing Jordan’s GNP classification as an ordinary borrower and to reassess the lending terms that might be offered for any new loans to the Government.
President Båge assured Princess Wijdan of IFAD’s commitment to supporting Jordan, addressed the role of IFAD in sustaining smallholder agriculture in the country and confirmed that IFAD would seek to revise the lending rates. This would ensure continued support for the development of smallholder agriculture in the country, and would also help leverage funds, such as sovereign wealth funds and those of the Global Environment Facility, which can complement IFAD loan financing with grant resources.
There is a need, now more than ever, to assist small farmers in increasing productivity through improved access to financial resources and the technologies needed to maintain and, indeed, increase their productivity in the face of higher input prices.
For further information, contact: [email protected].
With the help of IFAD, Yemen takes concrete steps to tackle the country’s food crisis
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| Village chief Yusef Al-Khoudemi, 55, and children plant sorghum, millet and beans after a brief rainfall in Dyer Al-Nibba, Yemen. | |
With soaring food prices in the international market and a consequent rise in domestic food prices beyond the means of 50 per cent of the Yemeni population, the drive towards increased local production has now become a top national priority.
To accelerate food production through agricultural development, the Government decided to boost support for small farming households as part of its development strategy, in line with the country strategic opportunities programme (COSOP) endorsed by IFAD’s Executive Board in December 2007. It has also undertaken an emergency initiative to increase local production through accelerated disbursement and reallocation of existing IFAD loan resources.
With IFAD’s agreement, the Government of Yemen has reallocated an amount of US$1.5 million of the long-term development resources of the Dhamar Participatory Rural Development Project to help small farmers maximize their production over the 2008-2009 cropping seasons. The initiative will start with the distribution of packages of improved seed and fertilizer in 133 villages, sufficient for the areas to be seeded with grain, forage, pulses, fruits and vegetables. The project will train crop extension workers and supply them with agricultural equipment and materials to enable them to offer efficient extension services. It will furnish each village group of farmers with one prototype of farm equipment designed to improve the practice and management of agricultural operations, for example fodder choppers and household poultry incubators. It will also provide a threshing machine for every two neighbouring villages to improve cereal quality and reduce post-harvest grain losses.
The project will supply veterinary extension workers with equipment and medicine, as seed capital, so that they can provide fee-based veterinary services to livestock raisers and use proceeds from the sale of medicines to create and manage revolving funds to ensure a continuing supply of medicine. It will also provide 76 village bee-keeping extension workers with equipment and materials, centrifuges, drugs and hives to enable them to offer extension services and training to bee-keepers. In each of these villages, the project will furnish five bee-keeping households with new hives, equipment and tools to improve their production, sales and incomes.
In addition, 45 savings and credit associations, already formed by poor rural women in 31 villages under the project, will receive capital grants of up to five times the amount of their savings to strengthen their loan operations and direct the loans towards investments in improved agricultural production, processing and marketing.
The initiative is expected to alleviate the food problems both of availability and of high prices for poor rural people during the coming months.
For further information, contact: [email protected].
Voices from the field: Coping with ever-scarcer water resources in Jordan’s Yarmouk valley
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| Abu Ihab and his wife, Umm Ihab, making pomegranates syrup on their farm. | |
“Now the situation is entirely different,” Abu Ihab told reporters for Rural Echoes during their field visit to the Yarmouk project site in October 2007. “My production has more than doubled and so did my sales of fresh fruits and pomegranate syrup,” he said.
Through soil and water conservation activities, technical support and microfinance services, the project has helped over 2,600 resource-poor farming families improve their production, incomes and food security. In this area alone, several water springs, including dry ones, were rehabilitated and linked to reservoirs and a network of downstream water canals. Some 618 farming families have benefited. Under a first phase, the project built some 7,831-metre-long canals through which water flows from a reservoir to plots belonging to farmers with water-sharing rights. About 2,500 metres of these canals connect three springs, Al-Ghadir, Eleakoush and Saeeda, passing through 680 dumdums of plots in this narrow valley, from which Abu Ihab and his wife and 10 children eke out a living.
More canals are under construction in this and other areas covered by the project.
Before project start-up, Abu Chap’s crops suffered because of the scarce water that passed through his fields from the Ain Al-Ghadir and Ain Eleakoush springs; much of it was absorbed by the soil before it reached his land. He used to collect water three days a week to irrigate his seven-dumdum plot. Now, thanks to the canals built with cement, his water use has increased by 80 per cent, as it has for the rest of the participating farmers upstream and downstream. In addition, he only needs to dedicate one day instead of three to irrigation. As a result, his production of pomegranates has more than doubled since the start of the project. Thanks to time saved in irrigation, Abu Ihab has more time to dedicate to making and packaging syrup and to selling both fresh fruits and syrup products in local markets. “My annual income from this land has increased from 2,000 Jordanian dinars before the project to more than 5,500 dinars now,” he said.
At a total cost of US$33.1 million – including an IFAD loan on highly concessional terms of US$10.1 million – the project has also provided technical and financial support to the target group, which encompasses the entire population of selected priority areas in the Yarmouk Valley, where poor farmers are in the majority. The project has enabled farmers to adopt soil and water conservation measures and to improve agricultural production practices. It has also promoted and funded credit for on- and off-farm enterprises, and has strengthened the capacities of project-area agriculture directorates to provide needed technical support and extension services. As a result, some 2,480 households have increased incomes and a better quality of life.
The achievements of the project’s spring protection and rehabilitation programme are complementing the success of other components. For example, the income-generating programme has assisted more than 800 rural poor women in developing small-scale enterprises (see Rural Echoes, issue no. 4). Furthermore, an estimated 7,950 additional households are receiving direct benefits from credit and technology transfer programmes. The project’s innovative participatory approach to managing and conserving soil and water resources is ensuring the sustainability of agricultural production in the area and is empowering the poorest families by giving them access to productive resources and involving them directly in decision-making processes.
For further information, contact: [email protected] or [email protected].
Knowledge management and capacity-building
Towards a new small ruminant research and development strategy to meet rising food demand and reduce rural poverty
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| Rabih Kamleh, a biologist at the Barelias milk collection centre in the Central Bekaa valley, tests for fat, protein and acidity levels. Milk is then pasteurized and sold to dairy producers. | |
Against this backdrop, IFAD and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) held an Expert Consultation on “Developing a Small Ruminant Research and Development Strategy in Non-Tropical Dry Areas of the Near East and North Africa”, in Cairo, Egypt, 9-11 March 2008.
The consultation was hosted by Egypt’s Agricultural Research Centre (ARC), Cairo, and attended by some 60 participants. These included representatives of ICARDA, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank, the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands (ACSAD), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the French National Institute of Agronomical Research (INRA), and other researchers and scientists from the various ministries, universities and national agricultural research centres in NENA, Switzerland and the United States.
Fawzi Karajeh, Regional Coordinator of ICARDA in Cairo, opened the consultation. The host country’s opening statement was delivered by Ayman Abu Haddid, President of ARC. Other statements in the opening session were made by Ed Rege, ILRI Director for Biotechnology, and by Mounif Nourallah on behalf of Mona Bishay, Director, NENA Division, IFAD. The IFAD statement set the stage for the direction and focus of the consultation. It presented the participants with an overview of IFAD’s interventions in the field of small ruminant production for poverty reduction. It also summarized the rationale for the consultation and described the socio-economic context within which IFAD operates in the NENA region, highlighting the substantial contribution of small ruminant production to livelihoods and food security.
Nourallah identified the major constraints and opportunities facing the expansion of small ruminant production and associated benefits. He underlined the growing market opportunities at national and global levels and the important genetic livestock diversity available and exploited by poor people in NENA, as well as the potential of processed animal products to add value and improve the incomes of the rural poor. Nourallah concluded by inviting participants to formulate a strategic research and development agenda that would address these opportunities and constraints.
Themes covered during the consultation included future trends in small ruminant production, the gender dimension in such production, pastoral perspectives in specific countries, and grass-roots and professional organizations of small ruminant producers within NENA. Participants also reviewed experiences and lessons learned, including the epidemiology of transboundary infectious diseases and their impact on production and trade; strategies for development, quality improvement and value addition; evaluation of small ruminant research in some countries; constraints and opportunities for range/livestock production systems in selected countries; and market perspectives and opportunities. Animal genetic resources management and biodiversity in local breeds were other themes covered.
Participants identified three prevailing small ruminant production systems and their value chains, to be discussed in three separate working groups: pastoral, mixed and sedentary livestock production systems. They then broke into the working groups, discussed the three systems, and presented their findings and recommendations.
Among these was a call for increased feed resources, production and access of smallholders to commercial feed enterprises. Participants underlined the need to ensure smallholder access to water and to improve water use efficiency. Recommendations also emphasized the improvement of community organizations and partnerships, and highlighted the need for policies that would empower communities, augment their competitiveness, promote food quality and standards to reduce health risks, and develop commodity value added through product diversification and increased market outreach. Product labelling, branding and traceability would be used as strategies for value addition and market expansion.
Working group participants also recommended development of analysis of the value chains of small ruminant products from the point of view of the smallholder, in order to understand bottlenecks and identify opportunities.
They recommended the development of strategies to use local and regional genetic resources better for food security and poverty alleviation. With regard to risk management, they recommended that greater efforts be made to enhance drought mitigation and reduce the impact of climate change on small ruminant production systems. A regional strategy for the management of transboundary diseases will be developed to enhance market access by poor people and animal health delivery and reporting systems.
Participants drew up elements to be elaborated in an action plan, including identification of contexts, problems and target groups; research and development thrusts and broad thematic areas within each of the three production systems; and mechanisms for translating outputs to outcomes and impact. The plan will incorporate sustainability elements for smallholders such as functional grass-roots organisms, productivity, profitability, environment, food safety, policy and institutions, and competitiveness. Other elements comprise networking and partnership development, an information and communications technology strategy, resource needs, resource mobilization and a time frame.
The outputs of this expert consultation – and a follow-up electronic consultation in which other experts from institutions and countries in the NENA region will participate – will lead to development of a small ruminant research and development agenda in NENA. The electronic consultation will refine the cited research issues through facilitated or moderated electronic conferences. It will also enhance engagement with governments and farmers and promote policy dialogue and partnership-building.
For further information, contact: [email protected] or [email protected].
In brief
Cairo to host a regional consultation workshop on poverty challenges
In preparation for IFAD’s Rural Poverty Report 2009, a Regional Consultation Workshop on Poverty Challenges will be held in Cairo from 29 June to July 2008. The workshop is expected to generate feedback from various regional stakeholders on the main rural poverty challenges identified by IFAD. Stakeholders include governmental institutions, farmers’ organizations, NGOs, think tanks, experts from IFAD country programmes and regional networks and other civil society partners. The workshop will provide a platform to discuss and validate an analysis of changing contexts, challenges and sub-challenges at the regional level. Participants will also identify and discuss the positive experiences of poor rural communities in overcoming such challenges. The workshop’s recommendations will feed into the articulation of lessons and messages relevant to policy that will continue beyond the consultation.
Expanding the Sudan country programme
IFAD’s programme in the Sudan is witnessing a period of intensive activities, extending from preparations for a new COSOP to the launching of new project activities. The COSOP should be presented to the ninety-fourth session of IFAD’s Executive Board in September 2008. A mid-term review mission of the Gash Sustainable Livelihoods Regeneration Project will take place from 18 May to 30 June, while the proposed Livelihoods Development Project in Southern Sudan will be submitted to the Quality Assurance Panel during the week of 23 June, in preparation for submission to the Executive Board in September. A start-up mission for the Butana Integrated Rural Development Project, also in the Sudan, is taking place in June 2008.
Building capacity for effective communication
Taking advantage of the Fifth Congress of Scientific Research Outlook and Technology Development in the Arab World (SRO5), to be held in Fez, Morocco, at the end of October 2008, IFAD and the International Development Research Centre will conduct a training workshop, Capacity-Building for Effective Communication, as a side event. Over 2,000 representatives of the Arab science and technology community will participate in the conference, including Arab universities and research centres. The training workshop is an opportunity to build communication capacities in the region and to network with both the scientific community and Arab media involved in communicating knowledge and innovation. This activity seeks to help information and communication officers disseminate research results to key audiences, including the media, in order to increase awareness and use of these results. The workshop will contribute to building knowledge communication channels for IFAD in NENA countries as part of its regional knowledge management strategy.