Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

SUSTENTA is a national programme to integrate family farming into productive value chains. The main aim of the programme is to improve the quality of life of rural families by providing integral assistance which aims at ensuring food security and increasing family income and employment through improved agricultural production and productivity. Interventions will focus on households headed by women, the elderly and children and households with lower incomes.

The Austrian contribution will implement one of the seven components of SUSTENTA which focuses on Technology Transfer including dissemination of agricultural kits and training of female and male farmers in sustainable agricultural practices through a network of extension agents. To mitigate effects of climate change the programme promotes interventions such as conservation agriculture technologies, dissemination and multiplication of drought-tolerant seed varieties and restoration of degraded land. To

increase agricultural productivity, campaign contracts will be concluded between small holder farmers and commercial farmers. These contracts are based on production plans and provide agricultural inputs to farmers who cannot afford to buy inputs and do not qualify for credit.

Expected results

-) 857 rural households in Inhambane and 622 rural households in Sofala Province will benefit from campaign contracts which provide access to no-interest financing of page 1 / 1 28.11.2023 16:28:11

agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals, utensils, silos bags).

-) 321 households in Inhambane and 250 households in Sofala will benefit from no-interest financing for Semi-Commercial Units including small-scale mechanization, irrigation system, multipurpose boreholes, shades, greenhouses, hydroponic greenhouses, storage infrastructures, geoprocessing and access to production inputs, aviaries, corrals, treatment mango.

-) 320 jobs will be created through the establishment of 16 Semi-Commercial Units.

In 2022, the war in Ukraine and high inflation rates led to increased food and fuel prices.

The contribution by ADA was therefore increased by EUR 1.000.000 to reach additional

3,400 small scale farmers in the provinces of Inhambane and Sofala.

Target group / Beneficiaries

The ADC contribution is supposed to directly benefit 13,200 individuals or 2,600 rural households of which 60% are women in the provinces of Sofala and Inhambane.

Activities

-) Promote the initial and continuous training of extension agents and support young women and men interested in entering the extension career.

-) Assist small family producers in agricultural and livestock production through technology transfer based on a network of extension agents.

-) Restoration of degraded land by integrating interventions such as agroforestry systems, plantations or protection of riverine areas to promote the revitalization of ecosystems.

-) Establishment of demonstrative plots and community centers for skills development as primary units for dissemination and transfer of technology and training of producers.

-) Promotion of self-employment opportunities for young women and men through the support to livestock and agricultural production.

-) Provide comprehensive assistance (social, economic and environmental) to rural families including actions aimed at preventing and mitigating gender-based violence in the families covered by the project.

Context

Funded by the World Bank, SUSTENTA (Agriculture and Natural Resources Landscape Management Project) began as a pilot program in 2017 in ten districts in Nampula and Zambezia. Initially, it covered 9,548 small scale family farmers, 91 semi-commercial producers and 12 agro-industrial enterprises. During this phase, 186,656 beneficiaries received assistance in the form of loans to purchase agricultural inputs and agricultural insurance as well as securing land use titles.

In July 2020, the Government of Mozambique decided to scale-up SUSTENTA and declared it a national flagship programme. Subsequently, the government allocated 24.9 billion meticais to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development MADER (about 10% of GDP), mostly to support the implementation of SUSTENTA.

SUSTENTA includes seven components to support family farming: i) Technology transfer (extension agents providing training to producers); (ii) Financing (credits for agricultural production, processing and marketing); (iii) Markets (promoting market links between different actors in the production chain); (iv) Productive planning (increasing efficiency and productivity of agricultural activities); (v) Infrastructure (productive, commercial, industrial and logistical infrastructures that promote value chains); (vi) Environmental and Social Safeguards (promoting guidelines that guarantee social, economic and environmental sustainability); (vii) Producer subsidy (targeted subsidies to stakeholders in the value chain to promote integration of rural families).

SUSTENTA is aligned to the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) as well as the Strategic Plan for the Development of the Agrarian Sector (PEDSA 2011-2020) and the National Investment Plan for the Agrarian Sector (PNISA 2013-2017), both of which are currently being revised to cover the next five to ten years.