Zarpari sitting beside the beans she has produced with the support of New Zealand

Zarpari, a 52-year-old widow from Kunar province, explains how the help she received from FAO funded by a grant from New Zealand has eased the pressure on her household.

Kunar is a mountainous province of northeastern Afghanistan bordering on Pakistan. 96% of its population is rural. Traditionally, the province collects abundant rainfall, feeding into the Kunar, a large tributary of the Kabul River that flows into the Indus. However, the persistent drought of the past years, alternating with sudden bursts of rainfall causing flash floods, has heavily impacted agriculture in the province.

Bar Kunar district, often known by its old name Asmar, is one of the sixteen districts of Kunar, located upriver in very mountainous terrain against the province of Nuristan. High mountains surround narrow valleys with steep walls, in which people live and cultivate their fields with wheat, corn and vegetables.

Zarpari, daughter of Zar Mohammad, is a resident of Leenay village in Bar Kunar district. Her husband died in 2019 in a car accident. She has to take care of her four daughters and three sons by herself. Due to the prevailing social and cultural norms it is difficult for her to work outside her home.

Although she can count on donations from members of her community, as direct gifts or zakat (religious charity provided through the mosque), she mostly depends on the 1 jerib of land that she cultivates (0.2 ha, or half an acre). She grows beans and vegetables, which helps her to feed her family while providing an extra source of income when harvests are good.

She tells us that “during the past two years, droughts affected our lands a lot. We had a shortage of seeds to cultivate our land. It was difficult for us to buy seeds and fertilizer as we also lacked cash. I was happy when I heard that I was selected to receive support from an NGO (Future Generations Afghanistan). I received 15 Kg of bean seeds and 50 kg of fertilizer and participated in a training about bean cultivation.”

“I learned new things: how to grow beans in a line system, how to plant the seeds most efficiently, and the best time to irrigate the beans. It helped me receive a higher yield than before. I collected 200 kg of bean from my jerib, 20 kg more than last year.”

Zarpari heads one of the 916 households in Bar Kunar that benefited from FAO Afghanistan’s ‘Summer Crops [Emergency livelihood assistance to safeguard food security and local food production of the most vulnerable rural families in Afghanistan]’ project funded by New Zealand. In total 13 500 vulnerable households (comprising 113 585 people) received this support in three provinces from February 2022 to February 2023.

This programme provides seeds, fertilizer and other necessary inputs, and training in how to use them most efficiently, as described by Zarpari. Other activities of this programme include unconditional cash transfers to the landless and most destitute, and cash for work to create or rehabilitate water-harvesting structures. These include trenches to collect rainwater and check dams built with local materials and know-how to break the force of floodwaters and retain water for irrigation purposes. These structural interventions decrease soil erosion, a nefarious consequence of long droughts punctuated by strong rains.

The New Zealand-funded project recently received an additional contribution of USD 2 million from 1 March 2023 to 30 June 2024. It is one of the projects through which Afghans are reaping a peace dividend, after 43 years of nearly constant war. It is said that this war started in Bar Kunar/Asmar when local residents rebelled against the communist government. Now residents of this area are slowly rebuilding their livelihoods, despite the double impact of climate change and international isolation.