FAO to provide seeds, tools and training to northern IDPs

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Thursday announced plans to supply seeds, farming implements and training to 94,000 vulnerable families displaced by the protracted war in northern Uganda. "These families are now almost entirely dependent on food aid," Etienne Peterschmitt, FAO emergency coordinator for Uganda, told IRIN on Friday. "This assistance will allow them to improve their self-sufficiency and provide some income and will help us establish how much food can be gotten from the project, from WFP [UN World Food Programme] sources and how much the people themselves can produce," he added. FAO said the aim of the US $2 million scheme was to help particularly vulnerable families with safe access to land to reduce their dependence on food aid. Special attention would be given to women- and child-headed households, the elderly and families affected by HIV/AIDS. Peterschmitt said short-cycle crops, such as vegetables and fast-growing staple, or high-value crops, could help produce the micronutrient supplements and increase the cash income that these vulnerable populations needed. FAO said it also planned, in collaboration with WFP, to help set up school gardens to expose children to vegetable production at an early age, and complement WFP's school feeding programmes in the camps. The seeds and tools would be bought from local suppliers where possible, Peterschmitt said. He added that prior to the distribution, farmers would be trained in appropriate agricultural practices, and demonstration plots would be set up in the camps. FAO said the kits would include a hoe and improved crop and vegetable varieties, and whenever possible, would be distributed along with WFP food aid to ensure the seeds are planted rather than eaten. "Each household will receive around 10 to 15 kg of seeds depending on the land available around the camp or the proximity of their field of origin," he said. "If security and climatic conditions are favourable, farmers will be able to save their own seeds from this harvest for the following seasons." As part of a joint UN appeal for the East African country, FAO has requested for $4.3 million for agricultural rehabilitation in Uganda in 2005. The current assistance was provided by the European Union ($1.3 million) and the Swedish government ($700,000). Northern Uganda has been the scene of a bitter, 19-year war pitting the government against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army. The conflict has killed thousands and displaced about 1.6 million people, who live in squalid conditions in internally displaced persons' camps and are entirely dependent on relief food.