The Arab countries account for more than 5 per cent of the world’s population, but less than 1 per cent of global water resources. And as a consequence of the phenomena associated with climate change, the region is facing an even greater water shortage. For 30 years now, IFAD and...

Poverty among the 22 members of the League of Arab States (LAS) is primarily a rural phenomenon. Established in 1945, the LAS promotes and coordinates integration among its 22 member states and strengthens cooperation at all levels: political, security, economic, social and cultural. IFAD is highly supportive of this process...

Ongoing violent conflicts accentuate the challenges that women and men face in the rural areas of Iraq, Lebanon, and the occupied Palestinian territories. The potential of cooperatives for sharing risk, pooling resources, learning together, generating income, and balancing work and family responsibilities, has yet to be actualized. Cooperatives in the...

Depuis très longtemps, la Méditerranée, de la Syrie à l’Espagne, a su pourvoir aux besoins de ses populations. Toutefois des évolutions rapides au niveau démographique et des modes de vie, ainsi que le changement climatique, engendrent des situations de tensions dans la région sur les questions de l’eau et des...

The present study was carried out in North Sinai region. Data were collected as part of the project "Multinational approaches to enhance goat production in the Middle East" sponsored by MERC, USAID. Three goat production systems were identified according to water source and type of feeding or grazing: (i) the...

The latest assessment of rural poverty in the country, conducted by IFAD, found that half of Syria's poor rural households depend on wages for their livelihood. One third of poor rural people cultivate crops and raise livestock to obtain an income. The incidence of poverty is lowest among the 20...

The Arab countries account for more than 5 per cent of the world’s population, but less than 1 per cent of global water resources. And as a consequence of the phenomena associated with climate change, the region is facing an even greater water shortage. For 30 years now, IFAD and...

Afghanistan is a beautiful country with a rich history. Today it faces enormous challenges. Afghanistan’s terrain is mountainous, dry, and subject to extreme droughts and devastating floods. Decades of conflict coupled with abuse, overexploitation and mismanagement of its natural resources have decimated its forests, degraded its rangelands and wetlands, and...

Wheat, grown on more than 200 million hectares of land worldwide, is a source of food and livelihoods for over one billion people in developing countries. This important commodity has been greatly affected by recent soaring food prices. Wheat prices have doubled in the last year, largely as a result...

This paper draws on key recent IFAD documents, evaluations, studies and reviews andalso on workshop findings and discussions related to the Near East and North Africa(NENA) region. The IFAD documents and evaluations consulted are: (a) IFAD StrategicFramework 2007-2010; (b) the 2006 Near East and North Africa Division (PN)self-evaluation report on...

This study showed that indigenous and local community strategies of drought management are no longer effective in coping with drought and the action plans that have been launched by the governments to manage this climatic hazard are mostly crisis based programs that encourage the dependency of the producers on the...

Organic agriculture has managed to attract the attention of local governments and economic operators and also to find space in discussion platforms and official strategy papers (concluding statement of the Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on Agriculture, Venice 2003 and the Mediterranean Strategy for Sustainable Development, approved in 2005 as part of...

In the first part of this paper, the Concept of "Sustainable Agriculture" is presented and discussed. Then a holistic view of drylands is given, starting with the aridity definition, then the location of drylands around the world. Drylands climate, soils and population are also characterized. The second part of the...

A linear programming (LP) technique was adopted to determine the optimum combination of crops and livestock production on small mixed farms in a newly reclaimed area in Egypt. Three locations reflected the different types of producer; traditional farmers, early retirees, and university graduates. One LP model with two scenarios was...

Au Maroc, l'élevage connaît un regain d'intérêt et, à côté des grandes étables modernes, une intensification, tant chez les pasteurs que chez des petits spéculateurs villageois. L'intégration au marché généralisée n'implique un souci particulier d'amélioration de la qualité que pour une minorité. Des encouragements dans le sens de l'amélioration de...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of agricultural productivity growth for generating employment and alleviating poverty in Egypt. Specifically, it attempts to answer the following questions: How important is agriculture for income and employment generation in rural Egypt? What is the relationship between agricultural productivity and...

The pastoral system of Syria, like most of West Asia and North Africa, is under stress with growing sheep population and continuous degradation of the rangelands. While the research and development society is strongly promoting community rangeland management in a participative and collaborative way, it is essential to characterize and...

In their individual and joint efforts to address the problems of poverty, IFAD and its partner agencies in the NENA region are confronted by a large number of constraints, including:• The natural resource base in both quantity and quality, in particular, the prevalence ofdesert and semi-arid areas and the frequency...

This issue of Caravan describes some of ICARDA's work on climate change. It contains overviews of the key issues, and articles describing research in specific areas: for example, how genetic resources – landrace varieties, wild relatives, indigenous livestock breeds – can be used to make small-scale agriculture better adapted to...

The Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari (CIHEAM-IAMB) has initiated since 1999 data collection on the organic sector in the Mediterranean area. Since 2005 a separate chapter in « The World of Organic Agriculture » has been dedicated to the Mediterranean area, and IAMB has committed itself to supporting the global...