SAO FRN II - RURAL D

closed

The project is designed to raise agricultural production and farm incomes of some 2,700 farm families whose present annual incomes are mostly below the absolute poverty level, living in the Lower Sao Francisco valley, encompassing portions of the states of Alagoas and Sergipe. It provides for irrigation facilities, the development of cooperatively owned family farm plots, the strengthening of agricultural and social support services and infrastructure, and institutional development of the main local executing agencies. The main risk faced by the project relates to CODEVASF's institutional capacity to implement it. Accordingly, the project includes a substantial technical assistance component designed to strengthen its capabilities, particularly in such areas as rural development and cooperatives management. A second risk is the recurrence of exceptional floods such as those of early 1979 or, more possibly, the continuation of the exceptionally heavy rainfalls which have occurred in the last two years (the highest measured since observations began some 50 years ago) and which have significantly slowed the implementation of the first Lower Sao Francisco project.