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In Syria, which has been suffering from a continuous war for more than seven years in which the number of victims exceeded 500 thousand Syrians, caused the displacement of half the population, and damaged the economic and agricultural pillar in one of the oldest countries in the world that knew and flourished agriculture. Not long ago, before the outbreak of recent events, farming provided a quarter of Syria’s economic output and employed a quarter of its workforce.
However, the systematic war and bombing in areas that have been out of control of the Syrian regime since 2011 have destroyed infrastructures, such as irrigation canals and grain silos, and crippled a state system that once provided farmers with seeds and purchased their crops. A sustained drought has only exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.
IhsanRD has intervened to assist farmers and vulnerable families in IDP’s host communities in order to enhance their ability to produce the various crops and food needed to feed their families and children.
Dr. Munther, Coordinator of Food Security and Livelihoods Program at IhsanRD, expressed the organization’s strategy and vision for its projects: “Relief baskets and emergency response cannot last forever, so projects need to be launched in order to help communities in starting their own businesses, to meet their food needs. We are trying to help people stand up and rely on themselves to start generating their own income.”
IhsanRD in collaboration with ACTED International has launched a new agriculture support project that includes two main activities:
The first activity is supporting for 3600 households to plant their houses’ gardens by supplying them with seeds, drip irrigation systems, tanks and agricultural tools.
This part of the project will extend over a period of 3 years so that each year will have new beneficiaries. Each family will receive two sets of gardening inputs per year for the winter and summer seasons. It will suffice for a garden area of about 1 dunum and provide an additional supplement to the food needs of each household.
The provision of inputs to the beneficiaries in the form of vouchers distributed in summer and winter can be replaced by a set of garden tools and inputs that were designed and studied in advance in the local stores. These kits will increase the accessibility of families to low-cost food and improve their food diversity.
Umm Rami was displaced along with her four children from the southern countryside of Aleppo towards Idlib governorate. She has no income source after her husband’s absence two years ago, forcing her to work in the farms adjacent to the town where she lives now. This prompted her to cultivate the small plot of land attached to her temporary home with her children after her application for the IhsanRD home garden support project was accepted.
“I’m very excited to start planting the garden behind my house, so my family will get the vegetables they need in their food instead of getting them at a high market price,” says Umm Rami.
This part of the project also includes 6 practical training during the duration of the project. Focusing on improved agricultural practices, best practices, and climate-smart agricultural techniques. Training will be complemented to include a section on sharing experiences from the past year to support a review and improvements in agricultural support programming among humanitarian and development actors. The training includes topics on plant care, harvesting techniques, and seed collection and production techniques so that farmers can sustain themselves after the end of the project.
The second part of the project is aimed at supporting farmers in agriculture and training in the area of Bensh, where the plowing service is provided to olive farmers. 500 farmers will benefit from this activity, equivalent to 1250 acres of plowed lands. In addition to providing support in the cultivation of wheat to farmers by providing them with agricultural inputs and the practical training of about 140 farmers.

Saleh, a breadwinner for his family of a wife and four children recalls his family suffering in securing food after having been displaced from their town in Hama countryside to the countryside of Idlib: “my youngest daughter wasn’t eating enough food, she did not want to eat the same meal every day of canned food which we got from the relief basket.” Saleh’s family like many displaced families who have no choice but the canned food from humanitarian organizations that respond to ongoing displacement waves in Syria.

In fact, Syria is one of the most food-insecure places. According to the United Nations, there are still more than 13 million people in need and more than 6 million displaced in Syria. But the situation was not always like this. Seven years ago, Syria was one of the most stable countries in the region, where agricultural products – the pride of a Syrian farmer – were highly demanded in terms of exporting, and Syrians were accustomed to the diversity of their meals due to the famous Syrian cuisine.

The situation now is different after years of war, bombing and targeting infrastructure in the areas that are not under the Syrian government’s control, where irrigation systems damaged and farmers displaced from their lands, and prices have jumped dramatically with rising of unemployment rate, citizens of Syria today do not have enough to buy the various needs that were considered as living basics in the past, and millions of Syrian families suffer from severe food shortages.

At the end of 2017, IhsanRD, in cooperation with WHH and funded by the German Foreign Office, has launched a project to support food security in the north of Syria. IhsanRD’s team who works in Idlib governorate, where a large number of displaced people is hosted, distributes food vouchers monthly to 3,700 families in the hosting communities. The food voucher allows the eligible families to exchange the voucher of $50 for the food they need in the stores that IhsanRD has contracted with.

Saleh and his family were very happy to receive food vouchers and his younger daughter, Samira, had improved and now she eats better.

The project of Food Vouchers was designed to do more than feeding the hungry. This project also aims to support the local economy by building partnerships with local suppliers.

One of the local stores’ owners, Mr. Abdulhai says: “Now I can pay off my debts and get the treatment for my wife who lost her leg. Sales movement and purchase has increased impressively in both the store and local market. Maybe I will soon diversify the goods in the store to meet the customers’ needs who received food vouchers from IhsanRD.”

By the end of food vouchers distribution next month, which has contributed to alleviate the suffering of displaced families who sought to secure food, in addition, to assist in supporting the local economy. Syria is still under war and far from stability, and most of the population suffers from poverty and unemployment, whereas displacement waves are still ongoing.

Syria has serious needs to establish sustainable programs to confront poverty and food insecurity that mix the short and long terms, combining emergency response with building resilience and helping families lift themselves out of poverty. This is what IhsanRD is doing through its projects that have been carried out in order to strengthen the communities’ capacities and enable them to possess the production tools in their hands.