Haiti Emergency Resilient Agriculture for Food Security Project - Additional Financing

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The proposed Emergency Resilient Agriculture for Food Security Project (PARSA) would focus on improving food security by increasing immediate food availability and accessibility and building socio-economic resilience by supporting livelihoods strengthening activities in the country through a comprehensive set of activities. It will complement ongoing initiatives (from World Bank and other partners such as IDB, WFP, and FAO) that aim to meet the immediate needs of the most poor and vulnerable households through food assistance and cash transfers. The Project would include immediate support to household income generation and finance labor-intensive public works which will generate short-term employment opportunities, and at the same time improve basic community/rural infrastructure which can, among others, support community- level efforts to improve food availability and resilience. The Project will also improve food availability in the short to medium term through local production-oriented activities, as well as maximizing the nutritious value of foods at the household level, which would complement other food security-related support in the country and contribute to addressing the children malnutrition issues. The Project would also help Haiti to develop a comprehensive food security plan as part of the project activities, linking it to nutrition-sensitive agriculture. It would, moreover, include a particular focus on supporting households to recover from the August 2021 earthquake.The proposed Project will have five components:Component 1: Improve access to food by food-insecure households. The component will ensure immediate food accessibility for affected households by creating temporary employment opportunities through labor-intensive works to strengthen rural productive infrastructure, such as the rehabilitation and maintenance of terraces, on-farm water harvesting facilities, watershed management/rain-water harvesting structures in mountainous areas, and rehabilitation of small rural access roads to isolated villages/communities or isolated irrigated perimeters. In addition school feeding will be added through the Additional Financing.Component 2: Increase availability of food by supporting climate-smart, resilient production of nutritious food products. The component will support the restoration of local food production to increase farmers’ income and food availability through the adoption of appropriate climate-smart technologies and approaches and food quality improvement measures (e.g. drought and flood tolerant seeds and short cycle crops ahead of the planting seasons, biofortification, hygienic handling and processing knowledge, etc.), while also stimulating the local economy and resilience to climate change. Producers (with targeted support also to women and youth) would receive support needed to restart production, including inputs, such as improved starter packages of crops or livestock, inputs to start fish farming, and bee-keeping kits. In addition, the component will provide farm equipment, such as fodder choppers and small dairy equipment, storage and handling facilities, and technical assistance. The Project would also support the necessary auxiliary services to ensure maximum benefits from the received assets, including extension support, inputs and services suppliers, veterinary and zoo-phytosanitary services, and mechanical services support. Finally, all component activities will be developed under the lens of the newly-developed Nutrition Smart Agriculture (NSA) strategy, which aims to simultaneously improve agriculture incomes and nutrition outcomes through agriculture interventions. Part of the project will be undertaken by FAO, with the rest implemented by MARNDRComponent 3: Promote access to food and resilient agricultural production in earthquake-affected areas. The component will respond specifically to the needs of farming households affected by the August 21, 2021 earthquake through a blend of activities designed to promote both short-term and medium-term recovery, including repairs to damages in irrigation channels and to structures and cisterns destroyed by the earthquake, restoration of rural roads access, interventions in strategic areas to strengthen resilience to earthquake and other natural disasters, provision of input packages to farmers who were severely decapitalized by the earthquake, and temporary employment programs in key supporting areas.Component 4: Project management, monitoring and evaluation, and studies. The proposed Project’s resources allocated to this component will support project coordination and M&E, as well as all aspects of management (including fiduciary matters, knowledge management, communication, hiring of specialist on gender equality issues and citizen engagement, as well as monitoring implementation of safeguards-related measures). Additional financing will also provide for activities related to building capacity and intersectoral coordination on food insecurity.Component 5: Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC). This component will be available for rapid response in the event of an eligible emergency, subject to request from the Government of Haiti (GoH).