(Adnkronos) – The Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has extended a cash assistance scheme to help 1,500 small farmers in the war-devastated Gaza Strip cultivate at least 0.1 hectars of land each with the goal of producing enough fresh vegetables to meet the recommended annual intake for 100,000 people, FAO said in a statement on Thursday.
“Farmers in the Gaza Strip are determined to resume local food production on every plot and every dunum (0.1 ha) available for cultivation, even as they are squeezed into rapidly shrinking space,”said Ciro Fiorillo, who heads FAO’s West Bank and Gaza Strip office.
“The results of FAO’s recent pilot in the Strip are clear: FAO’s cash enables farmers to purchase for scarce and expensive inputs, and begin planting immediately, while waiting for commercial imports of essential agricultural inputs to resume”, Fiorillo added.
The cash assistance is conditional on farmers using the support to cultivate their land and follows the success of a 2025 pilot scheme that helped 200 households plant and produce fresh vegetables, according to the statement.
The FAO-supported farmers are estimated to have cultivated at least 720 dunums and produced 1,094 metric tonnes of fresh vegetables, including eggplants, hot peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and molokhia (jute), meeting the recommended annual vegetable intake of over 13,000 people, the statement said.
Despite the impressive results from farmers who receive FAO’s conditional cash, the Gaza Strip agrifood sector’s recovery continues to be hampered by limited cropland and the cost and local availability of seeds, fertilizers, irrigation equipment, animal feed, veterinary supplies, fertilized eggs to restart commercial poultry farms, boats and fishing gear, the UN agency noted.
“One-off approvals allowing private sector and humanitarian actors to bring production inputs into Gaza are not sufficient. Farmers, herders and fishers must be able to access land, sea and a variety of production inputs,” said Fiorello.
The commercial sector is best placed to supply the right combination of inputs at the right time for farmers and must be allowed full and unrestricted entry of agricultural production items to the blockaded Palestinian coastal enclave, according to Fiorello.
“This should begin with the liberalisation of at least non-dual-use items (designed for non-military use) by local importers who are specialized in food production, had active trade relationships with local suppliers, were registered before the conflict and are still active”, Fiorillo said.
The FAO initiative is funded by Belgium, the European Union, France’s ministry of Europe and foreign affairs, and other partners, the statement noted.
The quantity of fresh vegetables that is recommended to be eaten annually is based on dietary recommendations from FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO).
