JEDCO, FAO sign project agreement to bolster income of rural productive communities

AMMAN — The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Representative in Jordan Nabil Assaf and CEO of Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO) Abdel Fattah Kayed on Wednesday signed a project agreement to bolster the resilience and income of rural productive communities while improving natural resource management in Jordan through the “Integrating Climate Resilience in the Rural Economic Growth and Employment Project (REGEP)”.

The project is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Dutch government, according to a FAO statement. 

This project comes in recognition of the importance to support the agriculture sector and sustainable management of natural resources.

The project aims to conduct economic evaluation of the specialised export value chains, support the agricultural coordination team, and build the capacities in the current farmer field schools that help adapt to climate change. The project also aims to enhance the response of these communities to improve the livelihoods of local communities by supporting families to increase agricultural and food production through applying climate-resilient practices, the statement said.

“The project provides technical assistance and capacity building to the targeted beneficiaries, entities and pilot innovative approaches to ensure food and nutrition security are achieved through an inclusive programmatic approach that also focuses on cross-cutting issues such as gender inclusion and climate change,” Assaf said.

He added that “FAO will improve irrigation water use efficiency and productivity, strengthen the capacities of stakeholders in adopting the upscaling improvement of community-based solutions”.

Kayed said, through this agreement, farmer’s resilience to water scarcity and climate change will be enhanced, the technical capacity of smallholders for production will be strengthened and productivity of high value crops will be achieved through the sustainable use of scarce resources and the integration with markets for increase in quality and quantity of produce marketed will be enhanced. 

The agreement is also meant to improve the access to domestic and international high value markets, and timely sustainable financial services, read the statement.