Lorenzo Coppola discusses high value crops and shares his view of the visit to Jabal-Al-Hoss, one of the poorest areas in Syria. Most of the population relies on rainfed agriculture and pastures and opportunities for off-farm employment are scarce. Durum wheat is the major cereal crop which represents, with livestock (for example mainly sheep), the major source of income for smallholders; however, income from agriculture is very low. Frequent droughts and the unpredictable availability of water during the cropping season further exacerbate the vulnerability of the Jabal-Al-Hoss population to poverty and shocks.

Jabal-Al-Hoss is one of the poorest areas in Syria. Most of the population relies on rainfed agriculture and pastures and opportunities for off-farm employment are scarce. Durum wheat is the major cereal crop which represents, with livestock (i.e. mainly sheep), the major source of income for smallholders; however, income from agriculture is very low. Frequent droughts and the unpredictable availability of water during the cropping season further exacerbate the vulnerability of the Jabal-Al-Hoss population to poverty and shocks.

In 2002, the national durum wheat programmes of Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey joined efforts with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and IFAD to develop and implement an Integrated Research and Durum Economics Network (IRDEN) Project. The purpose of the project was to foster the adoption of low-cost technologies and the development of alternative income sources (primarily from on-farm processing activities) to achieve increased income and improved household food security for resource-poor farmers in less favoured areas.

At Jabal-Al-Hoss, the project supported the development, distribution and uptake of drought-tolerant durum wheat varieties with improved traits appropriate for the production and commercialization of fresh and dried frike at the household level. Frike is a traditional Syrian staple food as well as a delicacy made from durum wheat. To produce frike, durum wheat is harvested while the grains are still green. The plants are swathed, hand-gathered and laid in the sun to partially dry. The next step is either roasting or boiling. The spikes are then sun-dried, threshed and winnowed.

Thanks to higher yields, improved farming practices and improved frike processing at the farm level, farmers adopting the ICARDA technologies reported average net profits one-and-a-half times to twice the profit compared with selling unprocessed conventional durum wheat. Among poor households, it is reported that frike constitutes between two-thirds and three-quarters of a household’s farm income and 30-40 per cent of its total income.

The technologies and practices introduced within the framework of the IRDEN project seem appropriate for Jabal-Al-Hoss smallholders. However, the lack of land to expand wheat cultivation, the limited availability of financing at an affordable cost and poor access to markets appear to limit the extent to which this technology could be applied by smallholders on a larger scale. This suggests that while improved farming and post-harvest technologies and skills are essential elements to increasing smallholders’ productivity and profitability, failure to address other key enabling factors may considerably limit the widespread adoption of new technologies by smallholders, and ultimately their potential to contribute to increased incomes and improved household food security.

References:

• Frike: a money spinner for the poor, in Caravan: Review of agriculture in the dry  areas. Issue No. 24 Jun 2007. ICARDA

• Mohamed El Mourid, Habib Ketata & Ali Nefzaoui (eds.) 2008. Fostering adoption of durum wheat low-cost technologies for increased income and improved food security in less-favoured areas of West Asia and North Africa (IRDEN Project Final Report). ICARDA, Aleppo.