Project ID: 1154
Executive Board Document: EB-2000-71-R-21-Rev-1

Uplands Food Security Project

The overall goal of this five-year IFAD-initiated project is to increase food production by supporting long-term rehabilitation of the rural sector. The projects objective is to demonstrate that substantially improved food production of higher quality is achievable with minimal short-term risk. Project interventions, focusing on four counties in two provinces (Ryanggang i n the north and North Hwanghae in the south), will be based on two fundamental initiatives carried out on about 45 cooperative farms:

(i) introduction of sustainable crop rotation appropriate to the main soil classes; and

(ii) adoption of catchment conservation planning, incorporating land zoning and reforestation. On these foundations, moderately high input/high output intensive farming can be sustained, increased food production can be achieved quickly, and the rural economy can begin to be rehabilitated.

Target beneficiaries will be the farming population of the more-remote upland arable areas where people tend to be poorer with fewer resources allocated to them on an area basis. The 45 cooperative farms, comprising 17 915 families (approximately 76 000 individuals), will benefit directly from agricultural rehabilitation. Cooperative farm communities will also benefit from any infrastructure or enterprise funded through the projects proposed cooperative community development fund. The credit component will benefit individual households, in particular women, who will benefit through the household credit component and the cooperative community development fund, each of which has women-focused targets built into the monitoring mechanism. Women will also benefit in that they will be saved the drudgery of the worst field operations, which will be mechanized.

Innovative features:

Within the D.P.R. Korea context, the following features are innovative:

(a) the project constitutes a concerted move on a fairly wide geographical scale to a more sustainable form of agriculture, with a whole-farm planning approach in the cooperative farms;

(b) advanced (and in the countrys context innovative) technologies will be introduced and demonstrated, in key technological areas such as potato-tissue culture, in order to support more stable and increased food production;

(c) resources will be placed at the disposal of local communities, through a project-supported c ommunity development fund, to undertake small-scale investments at their discretion at the local level;

(d) rural credit provided by the project will be directed more to individual households than to the cooperative farm (the latter constituting only 20% of the total credit volume);

(e) the project provides a flexible framework for donor collaboration. It already involves a number of government agencies, external donors and NGOs.

Loan amount:

SDR 19.2 million (approximately USD 24.4 million) on highly concessional terms.

Total project costs:

Estimated at USD 41.8 million, of which USD 6.1 million will be provided by WFP, USD 449 000 by Italy, USD 545 000 by UNDP, USD 61 200 by FAO, USD 50 000 by the Italian NGO Cooperation and Development (CESVI), USD 4.4 million by the Government and USD 5.7 million by the beneficiaries.

Cooperating institution:

UNOPS.

Project ID: 1064
Executive Board Document:

Crop and Livestock Rehabilitation Project

The objectives of this five-year project are to raise the income and improve the standard of living and nutritional status of rural populations in disadvantaged hill areas, and to revive food-grain production for the next crop season in order to alleviate the current food crisis. The latter will be achieved through the provision of agricultural inputs to selected cooperatives in the highly productive rice-growing areas of North and South Pyongan and North and South Hwanghae Provinces. Project components are:

- crop rehabilitation; and

- livestock rehabilitation.

The livestock activities in North Pyongan Province will benefit 117 cooperatives, representing about 47 000 households and a total population of 210 000. The crop-production interventions will benefit some 436 000 households, or roughly 1.9 million people living on 450 cooperatives in the densely populated provinces of South Pyongan and North and South Hwanghae. Funds generated from the sale of agricultural inputs will be used to finance other poverty-alleviation activities.

Loan amount:

SDR 20.9 million (approximately USD 28.9 million) on highly concessional terms.

Total project costs are estimated at USD 32.1 million, of which USD 600 000 will be provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the form of a grant and USD 2.6 million by the borrower.

Cooperating institution:

United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).