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Viet Nam: Emergency supply of rice seeds for flood affected victims in Northern provinces

Países
Viet Nam
Fuentes
Govt. Viet Nam
Fecha de publicación
Origen
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FAO published a final evaluation report on the emergency supply of rice seeds to flood victims in the northern mountainous provinces of Phu Tho, Yen Bai and Lao Cai.

Project background:

In response to the severe flood situation in northern provinces, the Government of Viet Nam as well as other national authorities and mass organizations, gave prompt and efficient emergency support to those in need. However, since the majority of the households in the affected provinces relies their income and food consumption on agriculture, the widespread crop loss and diminishing food stocks were posing a growing threat of hunger to them. While farmers were trying to reestablish their livelihoods by restarting their cultivation, they faced serious problems.

Due to the cold weather in the 2008 spring season, most of rice seedlings were killed and farmers had to use all stock seeds and even food grains to sow rice for the second and even third times. Thus, no seeds were left, and farmers had to use all money to buy seeds for 2008 summer season production. To make the situation worse, the summer rice was severely damaged by flood, and flood affected farmers are currently facing a critical scarcity of rise seeds as well as lack of cash to purchase seeds on their own. Therefore besides national efforts the Government expressed need for international emergency support to speed up the recovery process in the flooded areas and to prevent further hardship and suffering among affected farmers and their families.

In order to respond to such situation, the Government of Viet Nam through MARD requested rehabilitation assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), MARD indicated that support for poor and flood-affected households in Phu Tho, Yen Bai and Lao Cai Provinces to assist them to restart their rice cultivation production should be considered priority. This assistance helped the poorest and most vulnerable farmers to overcome their financial difficulties and restart their rice production activities, thus improving their food security situation and generate income in the medium and long term.