Almost three quarters of Uruzgan province’s economy is based on farming and livestock with remaining dependent upon trading and commerce. Uruzgan also happens to be one of the provinces reporting significantly low on gender equality particularly women’s performance on development indicators and participation in decision making. This coupled with the various recent shocks including the COVID-19 crisis has adversely impacted women’s access to secure food, health, and social services in Uruzgan province. Traditional agricultural practices, lack of access to certified seeds and traditional food sources, and lack of home gardening knowledge contributed to low food consumption and high food insecurity in Uruzgan province. COVID-19 crisis and related containment measures on top of the recent shocks including the severe drought of 2018 and floods of 2019 contributed to the worsening of food and nutrition security and adverse impacts on the agriculture livelihoods particularly of vulnerable smallholder households in the province. Further, health care costs due to COVID-19 infection and related loss of access to income sources have aggravated these impacts.

This impact was particularly severe for Mrs. Bibi Marjana - a 47-year old single woman, who heads her household comprising her two children, daughter-in-law and herself. Mrs. Marjana lives in Sarshakhili village of Terinkot district of Uruzgan province. Mrs. Marjana was one of those unlucky who got infected by COVID-19 in May 2020. Further adding to her troubles was the fact that her elder son, who was the sole earning member of her household, left the home with his wife to go to another province in search of employment while leaving the COVID-infected mother (Mrs. Marjana) and younger brother to fend for themselves while she was still COVID-positive. Not able to make ends meet or afford the health expenses for her treatment, Mrs. Marjana and her family became extremely vulnerable. This triple trauma of getting COVID-infected, sole bread-winning son leaving home and now figuring out ways to generate income to ensure the availability of daily food for her family left Mrs. Marjana in a particularly vulnerable and desperate situation. With neither any agriculture landholding nor any local employment / daily-wage labour opportunities, Mrs. Marjana’s situation became quite precarious tipping her into adopting negative coping actions.

The Action            

Mrs. Marjana says, “I am thankful that I was included in this project by FAO despite being COVID-infected and my elder son leaving my family. Because of this support I do not have to look around the village for some assistance or employment.” FAO in collaboration with the PAIL officials of Uruzgan decided to include Mrs. Marjana as one of the households to support with home-gardening assistance package as part of the COVID-19 emergency assistance project initiated in Uruzgan and Badakhshan, Daikundi, Ghor, and Herat provinces with generous support from the Government of Denmark. In order to support Mrs. Marjana and other vulnerable households like her, FAO provided emergency assistance in the form of nutrition-sensitive vegetable cultivation package comprising quality seeds of locally relevant and nutritious 8 vegetables (tomato, eggplant, okra, squash, cabbage, onion, coriander, and red radish), gardening equipment and technical training.        

Mrs. Marjana is “extremely happy that I can provide food and non-food support for my small family but even can contribute to the other families living around me without need to go out”.     

Upon receiving this emergency assistance support from FAO, Mrs. Marjana with her younger son’s support started cultivating the 8 vegetables in the backyard of her home. She also participated in the technical training on vegetable cultivation and nutrition-sensitive consumption and storage of vegetables. This training was organized by FAO along with implementing partner ANRCC while adhering to all COVID-19 safety measures like physical distancing, mask use, checking of temperatures, handwashing and sanitation at the training venue, organizing of the training in open ventilated space (backyard common space), and use of COVID-PPE at the time of training. Training focused on a mix of informative sessions on appropriate cultivation of vegetables and integrated pest management techniques and demonstrative practical sessions on the same as well as nutrition-sensitive consumption and storage of surplus vegetables. Mrs. Marjana applied all this new information and was able to successfully harvest enough vegetables to not only suffice her family’s daily requirements but also have enough surplus to sell in the village as well as now also created a stock of stored vegetables for the upcoming winter season while also using some traditional methods for storage.

 This has resulted in enhanced availability and consumption of nutritious food by all Mrs. Marjana’s family members as well as regular income from the sale of surplus vegetables to neighbors and in the village. All this has come together for Mrs. Marjana to enhance her and her family’s food and nutrition security and some cash income as well as ensured that she does not have to go out every-day to seek assistance for her and her family’s daily survival. It has further contributed to cultivation of vegetables in otherwise relatively unused backyard and change of behavior towards consuming healthy and nutritious food apart from decreased expenditure related to food consumption. With increased production of vegetables in the village, it has increased the availability of fresh vegetables and of nutritious food varieties for the targeted households and in the village.    

“I am happy with FAO’s support because now my household’s vegetable requirement is solved permanently, while it has also created some regular income for me to meet other expenses. I would like to ask FAO to extend these kinds of programs to the other villages in order to reach more people”. 

This emergency assistance project is funded by the Government of Denmark and implemented by FAO till February 2021 supporting 18,500 households across Badakhshan, Ghor, Daykundi, Herat and Uruzgan provinces.