The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations have launched a project 'Food Security/Poverty Alleviation in Arid Agriculture: Balochistan,' a pilot project phase for an amount of 5.970 million dollars.
The project document was signed by Federal Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind and Dr Ronny Adhikarya, FAO representative in Pakistan, here on Tuesday.
Funding for the project has been provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as grant-in-aid through the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in support of the government of Pakistan ongoing initiatives of poverty alleviation and food security focusing on farming rural communities.
This initiative is part of a 300 million dollars agreement between USAID and the government of Pakistan for assistance in the areas of basic education, health, governance, and economic opportunities.
The purpose of the project is to improve the livelihood and food security of the rural people of Balochistan by strengthening the capacity of the Balochistan applied research and technology transfer system and concerned departments/directorates to provide sustainable market oriented arid crop, orchard and rangeland, and livestock interventions and sustainable land and water resource strategies.
Four immediate objectives of the project are to strengthen the capacity of applied research and technology transfer of arid land agriculture, sustainable management of scarce water resources in arid agriculture, improve range management, livestock and dairy productivity and livestock marketing, an enhancement to crop productivity and agro-processing on a sustainable basis.
The target beneficiaries of the project are the rural poor agricultural households engaged in arid crop and rangeland livestock production.
The community-based participatory model will be used to link applied research to technology transfer activities.
The project will work directly with a total of 200 to 250 community organisations of 25 to 50 households in the three districts of Balochistan ie Mastung, Loralai and Qila Saifullah.
The project will be part of the Pakistan National Food Security Programme, which is technically supported by FAO through Technical Co-operation Programme (TCP).
The National Food Security Programme is based on the achievements of FAO earlier project for Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) started in 1998.
The SPFS promotes community based productivity enhancement programmes and income generating activities from which this project will benefit.