Climate Resilient Agri-Food Transformation Project

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The project’s main objective is to foster the adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) techniques and practices in project area and to strengthen the nation-wide agriculture information system and early warning services. The project is structured into four components.Component 1: Building a Climate-Smart Agri-food System in the Delta Region: through fostering the provision of improved irrigation service at the farm gate; the adoption of CSA technologies and practices on-farm; and access to markets and adding value beyond farm level to sustain the transformation. The component would target the old (established, not reclaimed) lands of the Nile Delta region, in the Governorates of Menoufia, Sharquia and Gharbia. All farmers below about 10 feddan in the three Governorates will be eligible for financial support for CSA adoption, value chain development and extension services. Extension services focused on CSA technologies and practices to increase livestock resilience and reduce emissions would also be offered to larger farmers. Irrigation service improvement would target the command areas of rehabilitated (lined) branch canals to be identified through a demand-driven process in Alshuhada and Ashmoun Districts (Menoufia), Al-Husseiniya District (Sharquia) along the El Bagouria canal; and Zifta District (Gharbia) along the Mowes canal. Areas with excessive salinity will be excluded. The first sub-component is to scale up CSA practices. To achieve this objective one of the proposed activities is to improve the irrigation services. This will be achieved through irrigation infrastructures investments at the mesqa and marwa level, which will be converted from earth canals to underground pipes, and individual diesel pumps will be substituted by a collective pumping unit, powered by electric or solar energy. Mesqas and marwas investments will be complemented with investments in measuring and controlling devices at branch canal level to improve management of the hydraulic network, and service reliability. Mesqas and marwas are private collective infrastructures, with Water Users Associations (WUAs) owning the infrastructure and in charge of their operation and maintenance, where farmers collectively decide for the needed improvement. At least 85 percent committed farmers and the creation of a Water Users Association (WUA) will be conditions for the procurement of works to be launched. Farmers will repay costs in full in line with Art. 57 of Law 147/2021, investment costs and related implementation support will be repaid in full by farmers over a period of up to 20 years (at no interest), through land tax authority under the Ministry of Finance. Another proposed activity is promoting on-farm investment in CSA. This will be done by providing farmers working on areas below 10 Feddan without access to commercial finance with one-off investment and technical implementation support to enable the adoption of on farm CSA technologies and practices that will improve farmer’s resilience to climate change. The supported CSA technologies and practices would be demand-based and could include among others improved irrigation, use resilient cropping processes that help improve soil carbon management, and efficient use of agrochemicals. The project will provide farmers and farmer organizations with advisory services and support the main public services supporting agricultural production. Renovation of WUAs offices and facilities is also included in the project. The second sub-component is strengthening small farmers’ integration into commercial value chains and stimulating investment in aggregation and marketing facilities in production areas. The sub-component will use the Productive Alliances approach, which is a market-led approach that promotes commercial partnerships between producers /their organizations and buyers based on business plans and off-taker contracts. The project will, thus, build capacity of farmers and stimulate investment by de-risking investment in improved collection and distribution chains (e.g., energy efficient and low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants in cold chains, improved storage and packaging facilities with energy efficient equipment and EDGE-certified) through an investment support program. To succeed in this contracting, and to meet the requirements of future buyers, it is essential to invest in the downstream of the value chains by stimulating investment in marketing facilities by producer groups and private businesses. Moreover, the project will finance partial one-off investment support for eligible investments in aggregation and post-harvest handling by groups of small producers based on the business plans developed. Farmer groups would be aggregations of different types (producer associations, community-based associations, non-governmental organizations, and officially registered cooperatives). To be eligible for support, farmers aggregations would need to undergo a pre-screening process to ensure their potential to develop into effective vehicles for aggregation of smallholder farmers’ produce as well as fulfil key criteria that would be further specified in the project operation manual (POM). Component 2: Sustainable Management of Agricultural Risk for Resilient Transformation (SMART). The objective of this component is to increase the climate resilience and adaptive capacity of the agrifood system in Egypt by: (a) strengthening agricultural information systems (AIS) and enabling climate informed decision making; (b) addressing disaster risk reduction in the agrifood sector by supporting a combination of measures, such as the development of agromet and hydromet early warning systems, and the promotion of risk transfer mechanisms; and (c) leveraging the information systems to scale innovations and promote climate smart agricultural entrepreneurship.Component 3: Project Management and Results MonitoringComponent 4: The Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC)