15/01/2020, Kabul, Afghanistan – With the approval of the government of Afghanistan, the Republic of Korea and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have joined hands to provide emergency assistance to around 1,600 vulnerable and severely drought and flood-affected farming families in Afghanistan’s remote and most food insecure province, Daikundi.

Under this new arrangement, the worst affected families, especially women headed-households and women from smallholder families will benefit from the project with the provision of agriculture input packages, such as certified seed, fertilizer and kitchen gardening tools. The beneficiaries will also receive training on good agriculture practices that will enable them to cope with future climate-induced disasters.

This project will be implemented by FAO in close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock (MAIL). The project is supported by the Government of the Republic of Korea with total funding of USD 331,271. 

“Korea, once a war-torn country, was able to overcome poverty and achieve food security and social and economic development in a remarkably short period of time. It was an investment in the agriculture sector along with hard work and education that made all this possible. The seeds we provide to Afghan farmers are not just seeds of crops but also seeds of hope that Afghanistan can do the same that Korea did, or even better. By strengthening rural farmers, the new project will not only address food insecurity and malnutrition in Daikundi but also contribute to making Daikundi more self-reliant,” said H.E. Mr. Zha Hyoung Rhee, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Afghanistan.

“Daikundi is one of the remote provinces in Afghanistan with high level of food insecurity. It is one of the prioritized provinces for FAO in terms of livelihoods assistance. Thanks to the generous contribution from the Republic of Korea, FAO will be able to address  most urgent livelihoods needs of around 1 600 food-insecure smallholder households”, said Rajendra Aryal, FAO Representative in Afghanistan.

The 2018 drought directly affected the lives and livelihoods of more than two thirds of Afghanistan resulting in around 10.5 million people most severely impacted. At least 300,000 people were internally displaced due to drought. The coping capacities of smallholder agricultural-based households had been severely eroded with a large number of these households resorting to extreme coping actions such as reduction in food consumption, sale of productive assets, forced migration, increased indebtedness, and at times taking children out of school and/or marriage at earlier-age. Further, in 2019 there were flash floods in some of the drought-affected provinces leading to exacerbation of already vulnerable livelihoods. Republic of Korea joined the concerted efforts to support drought-affected families and contributed 1 million USD to FAO in 2019 to provide emergency assistance to more than 68,000 drought-affected farmers in Ghor, Badakhshan and Daikundi.

FAO is working with different donor agencies and partner organizations to support the most vulnerable and food insecure farmers in the worst affected provinces of Afghanistan.

Since December 2018, FAO has supported 1.9 million vulnerable and food insecure farmers in Afghanistan’s 21 out of 34 provinces. The livelihoods assistance includes the provision of wheat seed packages, fertilizers, animal feed, and fodder crop seed to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers.