A five-year FAO plan to promote agriculture in countries affected by the Syrian crisis

The Food and Agricultural Organisation, FAO, held a discussion meeting yesterday at the Movenpick Hotel to present the FAO regional five-year plan which seeks to strengthen livelihoods and agricultural systems in those communities affected by the Syrian crisis in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq.  The discussion focused on the impact of the Syrian crisis on food security, nutrition, natural resources, agriculture and livelihoods in Syria and its neighboring countries while emphasizing in the case of Lebanon that the decision to allow Syrians to work remains in the hands of the national government.
The meeting included the presentation of the action plan that FAO has recently completed for Lebanon.  The Lebanon action plan emphasizes strengthening the domestic capacity to maintain food security given the implications of the Syrian crisis. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that FAO is seeking to collect USD 280 million through launching calls for the implementation of the strategic plan for all targeted countries that includes short, medium and long term measures, in order to build the capacities of communities affected by the crisis to adapt to the effects of the long conflict. According to the FAO Resident Representative in Lebanon, Bruno Manjaw, “the human response is very important to meet the needs of the those affected by the crisis, but we also need to focus on medium and long term investments in order to build flexible capacities within hosting communities and to support the development of sustainable agricultural and rural sector. For his part, the Regional Representative of FAO, Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, noted that, since the start of the Syrian crisis, there has been degradation in the situation of food in Syria and its neighboring countries with a drop of 50% in the production of grains compared to the pre-crisis years.  He also added that the crisis has caused serious damages to the agricultural infrastructure in addition to losses in livestock and the movement of agricultural resources across the border without due health controls thus causing serious threats of disease propagation.
At the level of Lebanon’s agricultural economy, Abdessalam emphasized the deterioration of the production capacity of the agricultural sector especially in frontline areas in Hermel, Baalbak and Akkar where farmers cannot reach their land.  He also added that there is no accurate information on the situation of agriculture and its infrastructure since 2009, a matter that rings an alarm of a possible food security crisis in addition to the fact that agriculture is not fully invested because of the dearth of Lebanese labor and the drop in labor rates.
In a related vein, the FAO report also notes a number of implications of the Syrian crisis namely the drop in actual growth by 2.9% every year since March 2011, a high unemployment rate which now exceeds 20%, an increase in public expenditure by USD 1.1 billion, and finally a drop of USD 1.5 billion in government revenues.
Source: Al-Nahar, Al-Mustaqbal, Al-Hayat 21 May 2014