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FOOD SE CURIT Y AND AG R I CULTURE CLUST ER AFGHANISTAN Q U A RT E R LY N e w s l e t t e r – A p r i l — J U N E 2 0 1 2 1

EDITORIAL Welcome to the first edition of the Afghanistan Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) Quarterly Newsletter. It has been a busy six months for the FSAC, with a strong focus on strengthening FSAC coordination at both the national and regional level. 2012 has seen the endorsement of the FSAC national terms of reference and its workplan. In addition, four new staff have joined us to support cluster coordination and information management. AfghanAid was re-elected as the FSAC NGO Co-chair. FSAC coordination mechanisms have been established in the Northern and Western Regions and plans are underway to support coordination in other regions. A crucial aspect of improving humanitarian coordination is continuous learning. The FSAC is currently undergoing a lessons learned process for the emergency response to the 2011 drought, which affected 2.8 million people in 14 Provinces. FSAC partners are conducting a critical, joint food security assessment to provide details about the severity of food insecurity at household level and inform emergency programming for the second half of 2012. In addition, the introduction of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) will support the humanitarian community to classify the severity of food insecurity and provide actionable knowledge for decision support as a basis for humanitarian responses. This Quarterly Newsletter offers the opportunity to communicate food security issues in Afghanistan, as well as the collaborative efforts of FSAC partners

in addressing these through well coordinated early warning, assessments and responses to affected populations. The Newsletter also provides a platform for highlighting achievements and perspectives of FSAC partners while identifying opportunities for further coordination with other clusters and development actors.

HEADLINES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Food security outlook Interviews of FSAC partners FSAC assessment on food security Urgent needs too restore livelihoods in flood affected areas Flood preparedness workshops Update on IPC RAF and market survey Humanitarian Research Digest

Food security outlook APRIL PRE-CROP ASSESSMENT SHOWS IMPROVEMENTS OVER 2011 HARVEST In April 2012, the Afghanistan Agrometerological Network (Agromet), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (which was assisted by the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (CHA) and the Afghan Veterinary Association (AVA)), the World Food Program (WFP), and FEWS NET conducted a rapid food security assessment in 34 provinces of Afghanistan (to be continued at next page).

FOOD SECURITY AND AGRICULTURE CLUSTER - AFGHANISTAN - Quarterly Newsletter - issue number one

The food security situation is expected to generally remain stable throughout the country over the next six months. However, newly displaced households and those who are likely to be affected by floods in the Amo River irrigated cereals and oilseed livelihood zone will face higher levels of acute food insecurity.

The 2012 cereal harvest starting in June in Afghanistan is likely to be an average harvest. In some areas, the wheat harvest may be up to two weeks later than usual due to slow growth and low temperatures in March and April. In anticipation of an average harvest and reflecting good pasture conditions, livestock prices have increased up to 100 percent above last year’s prices. Daily agricultural labor wages have increased up to 50 percent. Both of these represent improvements in terms of trade for poor agricultural and agro-pastoral households. Wheat and wheat flour imports to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Kazakhstan are likely to be smooth over the course of 2012. However, trade policies are subject to change. The last early warning update stated that by the beginning of dry season (June), the risk of spring floods is decreasing to its minimum. Nonetheless, during June to August, eastern parts of the country may suffer from summer floods triggered by the Indian monsoon. The likelihood of serious summer floods in 2012 looks very low as the Indian monsoon is forecasted to be below average this year. Both the full pre-crop assessment report and early warning updates can be found on the Afghanistan Humanitarian Response FSAC webpage http:// afg.humanitarianresponse.info/clusters/Food% 20Security%20and%20Agriculture 2

Interviews with ACTED and NPO/RRAA representatives in Mazar-e-Sharif Food Security and Agriculture Cluster members believe that the FSAC can engender better communication and coordination among the partners. In a recent talk with the representatives of ACTED and NPO/RRAA in Mazar-i Sharif. They believe that they have learned good coordination and communication between the group, FSAC members and other relevant stakeholders (other clusters). Besides membership of the cluster gives NGOs the opportunity of working together and joint assessments to avoid the duplication and have an effective coverage of the areas/population facing food security. Cluster is not only to learn from, but is also a chance to unify every activity, such timely monitoring and support to the implementation of food security surveys; data analysis and report writing; analysis of full survey background, goal, objectives, methodology and tools. Within the FSAC, partners learn who is doing what and where and what are the good practices in agriculture development and food security. “The first benefit of being a member of FSAC is timely and quality analysis and presentation food security data”. Says, Khalil Ahmad, ACTED base manager in Mazar. “This finding provides the analysis of full survey background, objectives, methodology and tools (including questionnaires and guideline) as well as supporting documents (workplan etc).” he added. “FSAC partnership improves the identity of the organizations”. Dr. Sattar, Provincial Manager for NPO/RRA. “It improves partnership with stakeholders especially with government departments.” And give the implementing organizations the ability to provide assistance for more right based beneficiaries and builds trust and it improves donors relationship that significantly facilitates fund raising”. There are challenges everywhere and in any context of our activities. As we know many local NGOs can’t take part in FSAC meetings because they have limited resources such as access to transportation to come from long distances. If FSAC can provide them with some support cost, they will be able to participate. It is necessary that FSAC members have a clear understanding of the food security context to complement their data analysis competencies and for this reason FSAC needs conduct training workshops for local NGOs and national staff of international NGOs. All NGOs don’t have access


to internet all the time therefore use of SMS or other communication media will be very effective to inform them of the events. “Yet data management is another challenge and to overcome this issue improve cooperation of local NGOs, it would be very efficient if FAO give them access to computers and internet. And trainings on report writing skills”. Says, Khalil Ahmad from ACTED.

JOINT FOOD SECURITY ASSESSMENT The Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) in Afghanistan in partnership with FSAC members will carry out a seasonal food security assessments in 21 provinces, between late June and July 2012. The objective of the assessment is to characterize the causes and nature of food insecurity in the country. Basically, it will offer comparable data across the country and will identify areas of severe food insecurity to inform food security emergency programming in the second half of 2012.

Provinces were ranked according to poverty head count (NRVA 2007), selecting those above national average. Provinces with higher malnutrition rates (above 10%) were also added to the sample when not already selected. In total 21 provinces were selected, shown on the map below. Districts within provinces were ranked according to their food insecurity status and communities were selected at random. Several FSAC partners agreed to implement the assessment in the selected districts, namely ACTED, ADEO, Afghanaid, AREA, CARE, CRS, FAO, IRC, JDA, MADERA, WFP, World Vision, IRC and ZOA. Several implementing partners will also implement the field assessment on behalf of FAO and WFP. In late June, FSAC conducted training of trainers workshops, with the support of WFP, MADERA, ACTED, FAO-IPC, and iMMAP. A total of 88 trainees including field supervisors and data entry clerks in Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif attended the sessions. In late June and July, the field assessment will be implemented and FSAC will receive the data by mid-July. The training was not limited to agencies that committed to implement the field assessment, but was open to all FSAC partners. All partners agreed that this type of assessment should be conducted on a regular basis, ideally twice a year.

RECOVERY NEEDS OF FLOOD AFFECTED POPULATIONS

In order to build on the FSAC experience in 2011, a task group reviewed the assessment tools and sampling methodology from February to May 2012. Acting as the main facilitator, ACF coordinated the working sessions usually attended by Solidarités Int., Oxfam GB, iMMAP, FEWSNET, WFP – VAM, ACTED and FAO – IPC. A household and a community questionnaire has been created and translated into Dari and Pashto. The sampling methodology paid particular attention to vulnerability criteria in the selection of provinces and districts.

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While the immediate impact of the spring floods was the tragic loss of life and destruction of homes, a longer-term repercussion for a substantial proportion of the population is the devastation of livelihoods. The Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) has compiled comprehensive data on destroyed assets per district and advocated for funding to support these populations with Cash for Work and other livelihood strengthening interventions, unfortunately with no tangible result to date. The number of livestock deaths greatly varies according to the source of information: between 6,000 (from NGO reports) and 20,000 (ANMDA) have been accounted. However, estimates of the destruction of agricultural land appear more coherent; approximately 100,000 jeribs of land have been destroyed by spring floods up to 27 June.


To respond to the devastation of the spring floods urgent recovery and rehabilitation of destroyed productive assets is required to help restore the livelihoods of the affected populations.

FSAC developed a database and maps that were shared with participants. All materials are now posted on the FSAC webpage. As an example of the materials that were produced during the workshops, the above maps shows, for the Western Region, the likelihood of suffering from severe floods (Zone 1,2,3) and the different response options, taking into account the local livelihoods.

INTEGRATED PHASE CLASSIFICATION

FLOOD PREPAREDNESS WORKSHOPS The Food Security and Agriculture Cluster in Afghanistan (FSAC) along with the Response Analysis Support Team in Afghanistan (RASTA) and iMMAP conducted workshops in the northern, western and eastern regions to develop livelihood-based flood preparedness plans. Following an inception meeting in Kabul on March 5th, the workshops were held in Mazar-e Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad in March, April and May 2012. A total of 144 persons, from 13 different provinces and representing NNGOs, INGOs, ARCS/IFRC, MAIL, ANDMA, and UN agencies, actively participated in working groups. Participants identified the main geographical flood risks, the livelihood profiles of their intervention areas, as well as the existing and the potential preparedness, mitigation and response interventions.

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Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is a set of protocols to classify the severity of food insecurity and to provide actionable knowledge for decision support. IPC consolidates wide-ranging data on food insecure people to provide core answers to questions like How severe? Where? How Many? Who? Why?, taking into account the inherent complexity of food security analysis, data limitations and diverse contexts. The IPC protocols include practical tools and processes to ensure these questions are answered as best as possible in a comparable, transparent, reliable, relevant, and consensus-based manner. IPC is not an assessment methodology or data collection tool. Rather IPC’s approach utilizes the available information to classify the nature and severity of the food security situation. IPC is designed around the needs of decision makers and contributes to making food security actions more effective, needs-based, strategic, and timely. As part of the IPC roll-out, a training workshop on IPC Protocols was carried out from May 16-19 in Kabul for the Afghanistan Food Security Technical Team (AFSTT). The purpose of the training was to guide the team to carry out analysis abiding by the established IPC protocols (tools and procedures). This followed up on more basic trainings completed earlier in the year to achieve a common general understanding of food security, nutrition, livelihoods, vulnerability, and their inter-linkages. A total of 25 participants (Government, National and International Organizations, UN Agencies and Programmes and Technical Agencies). A certified course in food security is already planned. The IPC analysis, scheduled to take place from July 29 to August 5, 2012, will generate the first IPC map for the country.


RESPONSE ANALYSIS FRAMEWOK The Response Analysis Technical Working Group (RATWG) was established on December14th, 2011. Nine organizations including Governmental agencies, the UN and NGOs have shown interest to part icipate. The main objective is to share and debate technical issues with regards to food security and livelihoods, to review information and analyses leading to better programming. With the objective to facilitate a better analysis for better programming with regards to emergency food security and livelihoods that will have a greater impact on the lives of vulnerable communities, the Response Analysis Support Team in Afghanistan (RASTA) has been operational since December 2011. Initial findings of the market analysis program on wheat and wheat flour markets in Afghanistan In close collaboration, MAIL, ACTED, ACF, FEWSNET, AfghanAid, CRS, OXFAM GB WFP, FAO and FGA, under the umbrella of RASTA, carried out market studies on informal wheat grain and flour prices in urban and rural contexts to understand the market dynamics (import trend, milling and trading capacity, financial challenges and possible ways out). The results of this study are feeding into the Response Analysis Framework (RAF), a component of the Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC) capacity strengthening project funded by ECHO. The objective is to evaluate the functionality of agricultural markets in Afghanistan to help inform decision making regarding the feasibility of cash transfers or food assistance programs. The initial findings to date have been as follows: a) In most cases, household access to markets is relatively strong, save for a relatively small number of cases where lack of infrastructure may impede market access; b) Surveys and fieldwork suggest that the market functionality in the wheat and wheat flour markets in Afghanistan is quite high. Survey results indicate a strong trader capacity to respond to moderate increases in demand. Surveyed traders seem generally able to respond to moderate (up to 20%) increases in demand. This is in line with most supply shocks observed over the recent past;

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c) Surveys indicate that most wheat and wheat flour markets in Afghanistan are quite competitive. The wheat and wheat flour markets of Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif were found to have a relatively high degree of concentration in comparison to other markets. This is an issue that will be evaluated further as part of the RASTA work programme. However, beyond this survey finding, there was little evidence of noncompetitive structures in these markets. In sum, most findings of the MIFIRA framework analysis on wheat and wheat flour markets in Afghanistan to date reflect favorably on the feasibility of cash transfer programs as a means of addressing food insecurity in the country . The final report is expected for mid-August.

HUMANITARIAN RESEARCH DIGEST Special Feature: New learning in cash transfer programming - Humanitarian Exchange Magazine Issue 54. It focuses on new learning in cash transfer programming. While cash is now an accepted tool in humanitarian response and it is being used more frequently, most programmes are small and gaps in analysis and practice remain. The lead article identifies three major areas that need to be tackled if cash is to be used more effectively, particularly in large-scale responses: market assessment, response analysis and coordination. Cash for work: A Contribution to the International Debate based on Lessons Learnt in Northern Afghanistan (GTZ, 2009) Emergency food security interventions. Humanitarian practice network (HPN), Good practice review, Number 10, Dec. 2008.

For more information... Contact FSAC Communication Officer, Mr. Mohammad Ibrahim. [email protected] . 0797.201.214 Visit FSAC webpage at http:// afg.humanitarianresponse.info/clusters/Food% 20Security%20and%20Agriculture
