South Sudan Farmers Receive Support Against COVID-19
By Khalifa Hemed
Published May 23, 2021
A United Nations agency has given a grant to South Sudan to help cushion some 23 900 vulnerable rural people from the adverse impact of COVID-19 pandemic on their farming activities and livelihoods.
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) says 4 780 households in Africa’s youngest nation and the world’s third most fragile country, stand to gain.
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Through its Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF), IFAD says it will ‘provide US$706 000 to support the Resilient Livelihood and Food System project, which will help small-scale producers in Bor and Torit counties improve their agricultural productivity by ensuring timely access to inputs and post-harvest technologies’.
“This grant to South Sudan is a demonstration of IFAD’s commitment to support post-conflict countries under the framework of the humanitarian – development – peace nexus, and to safeguard food security by ensuring small-scale farmers continue their farming activities and build their resilience to external shocks,” said Bernadette Mukonyora-Dias, IFAD Country Director for Eritrea and South Sudan.
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IFAD says it shall distribute 52 metric tonnes of seeds for maize, sorghum, groundnuts and select vegetables at the beginning of the planting season. It shall also distribute hooks, nets and spools of twine to fisherfolk.
According to IFAD, lots of food in South Sudan is lost before it ever reaches markets–farmers lose about 15 to 50 per cent of their produce–due to inadequate storage infrastructure.
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This project, IFAD says, will not only train farmers on production technologies and post-harvest handling practices to enable them to safeguard their harvest, but shall also ‘make available post-harvest equipment such as threshers, silos, hermatic bags, refrigeration and coolers’.
