FAO/Odai Heddawi

In Dweir, a distant village on the bank of the Euphrates River in Deir-ez-Zor, a group of Syrian women have transformed their lives after attending sessions at FAO’s Farmer Field School on livestock production. The women farmers have successfully improved their unsustainable agricultural practices and turned their modest production rates into a profitable business thanks to the friendly and practical learning space offered by the FFS, and the support of an energetic and experienced facilitator.

The Dweir FFS, implemented by FAO under the Building Local Resilience in Syria (BLRS) phase 1 project with financial support from UK Aid, is one of 389 FFSs contributing to the enhancement of good agricultural practices (GAP) and climate smart agriculture (CSA) approaches for more than 9 000 farmers in five governorates: Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Homs, and Rural Damascus. The FFSs will make farmers more productive, resilient, and aware of the best agricultural practices they need to adopt to climate smart farming.

From isolation to empowerment

"The remote location of Dweir village has caused livestock keepers to rely on unsustainable farming practices since many specialists could not reach the area,” says the facilitator, Nilly Al-Obayyed, describing the challenges she faced when she was assigned and trained to facilitate the Dweir FFS.

The area context is also a main factor for the community’s poverty, resulting in putting girls’ education at the bottom of their priority list, as Nilly explains: “In addition to the community’s conservative nature, poverty deprives girls of their right to education, which means that most women here are illiterate.”

To overcome this, Nilly consistently created colorful informational boards and drawings and made regular visits on the FFS’s off days to interact with the participants and answer any questions they may have. She would also encourage the participants to share their experiences and would come up with memorable jingles to make sure they absorbed the new information.

Solidarity through prosperity

Another pressing challenge was a long-standing rivalry between two clans in the community, which had at times become violent. Nilly had to find a way to convince women who came from these clans to sit together under one roof and engage in discussions. She found a neutral space hosted by a participant from a third neutral clan, where women could discuss and learn without any barriers or worries.

Nilly also saw the ‘agroecosystem analysis’ and ‘group dynamic’ segments of the FFS session as an opportunity to encourage the women to talk and connect. As they learned how to properly feed their cows and measure their weight, they noticed a positive change on their cows’ health and productivity. “This new ability to control the cows’ diets and environments to keep them healthy was very exciting, especially as they saw their production increase, and the women say they would gather with their neighbors at night after the sessions to share the knowledge and skills learned in the FFS with them.” Nilly elaborates.

These improvements allowed Nilly to create the incentive for the women to learn milk processing techniques, understand the economic benefits of upgrading their dairy products into more valuable income-generating opportunities, and learn the basic business skills needed to drive this growth forward.

The targeted FFS group size is around 25 members , but guests are encouraged to attend and benefit from the information shared. Learning how to make and store their cows’ fodder, conduct early detection of livestock diseases, and determine the right time for artificial insemination saved the participants a lot of money. As the participants spread their new knowledge and the positive impact it had on their production across the community, there were as many as 50 farmers who were present in the latter stages of the FFS, and the Dweir FFS became a a collaborative, cohesive and inclusive learning environment in the local community.

As a result, the FFS played a constructive role as a post-conflict intervention for peace building. This helped bridge the divides between women from different clans, enabling them to focus on improving their agricultural skills and livelihoods. “The women have reconciled their tribal disagreements. They now visit each other and socialize without restriction, despite their husbands still being at odds with each other,” Nilly adds.

A collective achievement

As the milk production exceeded their immediate household needs, the women participants of the FFS found a collective need for some milk processing tools, such as a butter churner, and they also found the encouragement to start a small savings group among them to buy these necessary tools. They later realized that they could sell surplus products for a profit, allowing them to further invest in their dairy production and expand their small-scale dairy processing activities.

“The FFS participants were  highly engaged and active.” Nilly explains how the project evolved. “At first, they barely produced what they needed. However, after about three months of steady production, their mindset changed, and they realized they had an opportunity to generate more income. They needed a place to store and sell their dairy products together, so one of them offered a space she had available which was directly accessible from the street, and they opened a shop. Within two weeks, one of the neighbors who regularly traveled to Abu Kamal, a distant town on the border with Iraq, offered to take some of the dairy products to sell them there, and the products were an instant success with the locals, which expanded the women’s business.”

The financial empowerment also empowered the women psychologically. They were very shy at the beginning. However, once they started to believe in themselves, they felt they were in full control of their lives. “One of the women said to me that after she was able to expand her dairy production and sell her products to generate an income, she is now a decision-maker at home. After her daughter finished the 6th grade in 2020, she had to be taken out of school because the family could not afford the basic school requirements such as pens and notebooks. Now that the mother can generate income from dairy production, she has the power to fulfill her daughter’s wish of continuing her education. She says her daughter will be taking the 9th grade exam later this year, and she wants to become a lawyer to defend women’s rights” Nilly concludes.