UNION OF MYANMAR

AREA OF EXPERTISE

Food security and livelihoods

FUNDING

• Funding: Aide Alimentaire Programmée
• Partners: AYO (Ar Yone Oo – Burma NGO))

In recent years, the population has enacted survival strategies, allowing it to pass through food shortages (loans leading to indebtedness, seasonal migration to adjacent areas, foreign migration of young adults who remit a part of their revenue to their families…). However, in the absence of investment in the agricultural sector, these strategies have had little effect on the food security situation of the resident population.

Food aid distributed in previous years has not permitted the population to strengthen its resilience capacity against recurring shocks affecting home food security.
The continued presence of our teams since October 2012 in a food security support programme in 13 villages in the south of the canton – in partnership with the Burmese Association Ar Yone Oo (AYO) and the support of CIAA (Comité Interministériel pour l’Aide Alimentaire) has enabled us to see existing needs for other villages. Villagers have spontaneously come to require TGH  / AYO intervention and the implementation of actions similar to the on-going programme.

The selection criteria for new villages have particularly taken into account their isolated nature and absence of humanitarian intervention.

The approach developed by TGH is based on two specific objectives:

• Improvement of access to foodstuffs, by implementation of “cash for work”, which supplies a revenue supplement in a zone where employment opportunities are extremely rare. Furthermore, transport of foodstuffs from Pakkoku (Magway) now being a current practice, this supplement will permit beneficiaries to tolerate the extra cost of local provisioning, which up to now has obliged the most financially vulnerable homes to decrease rations or daily food consumption to make stocks last longer.
• Increase of agricultural yields, coupled with diversification of cultivation through implementation of enduring solutions (renovation and extension of irrigation canals, supply of agricultural inputs, protection of cultivated land, farmer training). The impact on agricultural yields will be measurable from the 2014 season. Theoretical and practical training given to farmers in the programme will enable long-term security.

Regarding all the work and training implemented in the proposed actions, TGH and AYO will look to use and spread known and easily reproducible technologies in the region.