From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2008 - 10:47:38 EDT
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Small farmers to get aid from FAO
By Ira Karen Apanay, Reporter
THE Philippines is one of the new 48 countries that will be covered by a
series of projects of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations, with a total funding of $21 million, to help small
farmers and vulnerable households mitigate the negative effects of
rising food and farm input prices.
FAO said the projects aims to provide farmers with agricultural inputs
this month and for an expected duration of one year.
The projects will be funded by the Technical Cooperation Program of FAO
and is part of its initiative on soaring food prices.
Six countries namely Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Mauritania,
Mozambique and Senegal are already benefiting from the projects for a
total funding of nearly $2.8 million.
In a statement, FAO said its own funding under the initiative now covers
54 countries.
Among the 48 other countries included in the program are Afghanistan,
Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Burundi,
Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic
Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Eritrea, Grenada, Guinée,
Guinée-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan and North
Korea.
FAO said the immediate objective of the projects is to ensure the
success of the next planting seasons and, in the longer term,
demonstrate that by increasing the supply of key agricultural inputs,
such as seeds and fertilizers, small farmers will be able to rapidly
increase their food production.
“Increased food production would help cushion small farmers, who often
have to buy part of their food from markets with rising food prices and
would, hopefully, lead to a surplus production,” FAO said.
It further stated that the provision of seeds, fertilizers and other
agricultural inputs to small farmers is intended to encourage donors,
financial institutions and national governments to support the provision
of farm inputs on a much larger scale.
The unprecedented hike in food prices, which rose 52 percent between
2007 and 2008, has severe economic, social and political consequences in
poor countries. Likewise, the high prices of agricultural inputs have
become a major obstacle to developing countries’ efforts to increase
agricultural production, FAO said.
Govt optimistic on ‘palay’ targets
Agriculture officials expressed hopes that the palay (unhusked rice)
production target of 17.32 million metric tons (MTs) for 2008 can still
be achieved despite Typhoon Frank’s crop damages.
Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said officials of his agency believe
they can also hit their original target of 10 million-plus MTs of palay
for the wet or main cropping season, despite the typhoon’s damages, on
the condition that they can quickly implement the proposed farm
rehabilitation program to offset production losses in the affected areas
of Western Visayas and 11 other regions.
The production target of 17.32 million MTs is 6.67-percent higher than
last year’s record yield of 16.24 million MTs.
Latest reports from the Department of Agriculture Rice Action Center,
headed by Undersecretary Jesus Emmanuel Paras, showed that farmers have
already reaped 7.3 million MTs, or 200,000 MTs more than the 7.1-million
MT target, for the dry or summer crop from 1.79-million hectares of rice
lands, Yap said.
Manila Times
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