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| A future farmer from Ghouta, Syria. His family is one of the thousands of recipients of AC4Ds refugee feeding program. As goes his ability to return to his family's farm in Ghouta and rebuild a life, so goes Syria's hope for rebuilding a future. |
Consider Syria. More than two-thirds of the population now require humanitarian assistance, including 8.7 million people who do not have enough food. About 4.8 million Syrians are refugees, and even more are internally displaced. Most have been uprooted because their livelihoods have been destroyed – sometimes by unaffordable food rather than direct violence.
We have found that US $200 in support enables a Syrian farmer to produce two tonnes of wheat, enough to feed a family of six for a year and provide seeds for future planting. That is a fraction of the economic cost of food aid, not to mention the dramatic human costs.
Interventions to ensure food security and protect and rehabilitate the agricultural sector have a large and often unnoticed contribution to make, as beyond their obvious role in addressing hunger, they can also help mitigate and even prevent conflicts. Peace and food security are often mutually reinforcing.
Farming is the primary activity of the world’s rural poor, who are also the most vulnerable to the consequences of civil strife, which nowadays is the most common form of armed conflict. Fostering broad-based agricultural prosperity can enhance social cohesion, reduce tensions over rival claims to natural resources and, by creating rural jobs, undercut the recruiting base of violent extremism around the world.
Increasing evidence shows that timely and robust food security interventions can enable individuals and communities to build resilience to conflict and hasten their recovery from it.
As important as direct food aid is during a time of conflict, it is the rebuilding and steady development of the agricultural sector that will create the food prices and rural incomes necessary for sustained peace.
