Haiti government and IFAD reps display the agreement signed on Tuesday.
ROME, Italy--The government of Haiti and the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) signed a financing agreement on Tuesday for a project that will help Haitian farmers recover from the impact of COVID-19 and increase staple food production. The project will kickstart rapid recovery of agricultural production and incomes by rehabilitating small-scale irrigation systems – a basic necessity in a country badly hit by climate change, provide essential agricultural inputs and help increase farmers’ resilience.
The Emergency Project for Strengthening the Resilience of Small Farmers to the Consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic (PURRACO, by its French acronym) is a US $5.8 million project ($5 million from IFAD; $0.5 million from the Haitian government and a beneficiaries’ in-kind contribution of $0.3 million). It will benefit 3,250 poor rural households (around 13,000 people, half of whom will be women and 30 per cent youth).
“IFAD has been committed for many years to improving Haitian family farmers’ lives. In this difficult time the Fund is stepping up to help them recover from the impact of the pandemic, restart their communities’ economies and build the resilience to face future health and other emergencies,” said Rossana Polastri, IFAD’s Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
PURRACO will target the four Haitian departments most affected by food insecurity due to structural fragilities, recently aggravated by COVID-19 impacts: the North-west, the North-east, the Central and the South Departments. It will be implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development MARNDR.
PURRACO will help households recover, increase their production to pre-COVID-19 levels, and access markets, building food security with enhanced efficiency in agricultural production. At the same time, short-cycle animal husbandry (hens, pigs and goats) will increase the availability of animal protein in these remote rural areas, compensating for historic nutritional deficiencies.
Other IFAD operations are also providing support to rural Haitians. Earlier this year, IFAD announced the start of AGRI-digitalisation, a project that will enable 132 rural savings cooperatives and 86 producers’ organisations across Latin America and the Caribbean (22 of them Haitian) to enhance their financial services and to market their products online.
The ongoing Agricultural and Agroforestry Technological Innovation Programme (PITAG, by its French acronym) is a US $90 million joint investment involving funds from IFAD, the government of Haiti, the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It aims to spread the adoption of sustainable agricultural technologies; the project is achieving significant progress in the South Department, where IFAD financing is concentrated.
PURRACO is part of a broader response orchestrated by the Ministry of Agriculture to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a coordinated multi-donor effort, several other UN agencies and international financial institutions (IFIs) are contributing to this plan, the main objectives of which are to relaunch agricultural production, fishing and aquaculture and to secure physical, economic and social access to food.
Since IFAD started its engagement with Haiti in the 1980s, the Fund has invested in 10 projects in the country with a total value of $276.51 million ($125.21 million from IFAD funds), benefitting 103,315 families.
