Building Resilient Commercial Smallholder Agriculture (BRECSA), a global agriculture and food security program, aims a 30% increase in resilient commercial agricultural production and improve food and nutrition security in the 4 target districts by 2030.
Sarpang, Tsirang, Trongsa and Zhemgang are the four target districts of BRECSA targeting a total of about 37 gewogs and more than 500 villages. The project cost is about USD 30.064 million (M) where the project targets to increase resilient agriculture.
Sonam Gyeltshen, project director of the BRECSA said that the project will not only transform smallholder agriculture into inclusive and resilient agri-food systems but also the project will increase profit and will secure food and nutrition.
In addition, Sonam Gyeltshen said that the main intervention of the project includes pro-poor support and commercial intervention.
“The intervention for the project includes advocacy and capacity development program and also readiness support for people with disabilities,” said the project director.
In addition, the project director said that as of the commercial intervention it includes promotion of commercial farming through hub development, product development, packaging, and certification, amongst others.
“The BRECSA project is developed during the time of the pandemic and during the transformation where the project contains all the components of the agri-transformation,” said Sonam Jatso, IFAD country officer.
For instance, according to the project director, BRECSA will support both agriculture and livestock and shared that the technical support of the BRECSA project is supported by World Food Program (WFP).
“WFP also acts as a consolidated livelihood exercise for analyzing resilience which is basically to map out the crop suitability based on climate change impact,” Sonam said.
According to the project director, the tool used by the WFP in the other country is successful where the project will be supporting and implementing the agriculture resilience plan which comes to the implantation of a clear exercise in the four target districts.
Meanwhile, once the project supports the production, the project will also be supporting the value chain development and moreover the project will make the agri-sector more innovative and competitive through the digital innovation, amongst others.
The project will work through inclusive value chain development approach to address the gaps between producers, traders and consumers that are posing a challenge to the sustainability and resilience of Bhutan’s food and farming systems. The project interventions will focus on the commercialization and diversification of farm systems and products meeting market requirements; strengthening of existing value chains (VCs) and developing of new VCs; finance enabling small-scale infrastructure (on-farm water and soil conservation, aggregation centers, cold storage, milk chilling centers etc.); post-harvest processing and ensuring products meet internationally recognized food standards as set by the Bhutan Food and Drug Authority (BFDA); Capacity building and support to youth, cooperatives and other producer organizations for climate resilience agriculture practices, establishment of youth enterprises for provision of organic inputs (biochar, soil stimulants, bio-fertiliser and bio-pesticides); and facilitating business linkages between producers, buyers, financiers, and local public stakeholders through multi-stakeholder platforms (MSP) and Business interactions meetings (B2B) to meet local, national, regional and global consumer demand.
The project aims to boost equitable employment and income generating opportunities for smallholder women, men and youths through capacity building and investment support to small-holder farmers on production, marketing, and better access to services (technical, financial, and business) for engaging in profitable value chains as vegetables, dairy, livestock, poultry and high value crops (herbal, aromatic, medicinal and spices).
In doing so, the project will seek to stimulate post-COVID19 employment opportunities for women and youth, the adoption of climate resilient and market oriented nutritious food products, and facilitate inward investment for the production and marketing of high quality and high value home-grown Bhutanese agricultural products. Lessons from the FSAPP (first GAFSP project) and good practices from CARLEP will be built into the proposed project for increasing impact.
The project’s theory of change builds on CARLEP’s existing supply-side programme successes in five eastern districts of Bhutan. Furthermore, through the introduction of WFP’s Consolidated Livelihood Exercise for Analysing Resilience (CLEAR), and other targeted interventions, the resilience of the agriculture sector will be further strengthened. Through a participatory identification of current and anticipated climate change impacts on local livelihoods, production systems, and markets, the project will enable government, community, and private sector actors to develop tailored strategies that respond to farm level needs and market-access related blockages. With the support of a portfolio of existing climate change and value chain assessments, the CLEAR approach will contribute to the formulation of multi-stakeholder district level agriculture resilience plans.
The district agriculture resilience plans will drive the project’s operational support for increasing the commercial orientation and resilience of production systems. Priority support for resilient production (Outcome 1) will be given to mainstreaming proven climate-adapted and market-led farming practices across 20 wards (also known as gewogs or sub-districts). This transformational re-orientation of production will be catalysed by activities to commercialize smallholder agriculture by addressing market failures in target value chains (fresh vegetables, dairy, livestock, poultry and high value crops).
Sherab Dorji from Thimphu
