Support to Integrated Farming Overview The major socio-economic challenges the country currently strives to overcome in the agriculture sector include reducing the over-dependence on imports of agriculture products, improving national food security, strengthening organized farming and subsistence farming systems, applying appropriate technologies and developing the required market infrastructure. Lessons learnt from previous engagement in this area through the Support to Integrated Farming project (2008-2010) show that sustainability of community level agriculture activities depends essentially on having focused policy level interventions that enable the creation of an environment where small community businesses (SMEs) can grow. This includes enabling the expansion of production capacities, developing business and managerial capacity at island level, establishing formal market linkages for such SMEs through private sector partnerships as well as encouraging greater private sector engagement in such activities at a commercial level. A beneficiary of the Haa Alif Baarah Island poultry project – such community level engagements require policy level support for sustainability. Photo: Masrah Naseem/ UNDP Maldives 2012. Our Focus With the main objective to strengthen economic resilience of island communities and vulnerable groups including women and youth, this project builds on the first phase of Support to Integrated Farming Project (2008-2010) during which innovative and environment friendly agriculture technologies such as auto- pot farming systems, medium scale poultry facilities and high- quality, standardized food processing projects were successfully set up in eight community islands. The main strategy involves building up on the successes and lessons learnt from these interventions to expand and commercialize innovative farming and mari-culture ventures in local communities. To this end, the project aims to assist at policy level in strengthening the sustainability of livelihood activities through expansion, commercialization, and knowledge exchange and market Project Snapshot Project Status Ongoing Start date 1 January 2011 Estimated end date 31 December 2013 Geographic coverage Nation wide Focus area Poverty Reduction MDG 1 Partners Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture, Marine Research Centre Project Focal Point Aysha Solih Integration through private sector partnerships, as well as building the overall institutional capacity of the Ministry of Fisheries and Agriculture (MoFA). Our Work - The community level integrated farming and value addition activities (Autopot farming, poultry and chilli sauce production) which were successfully demonstrated with UNDP support in eight island communities were used as a baseline for MoFA to scale up and replicate such initiatives with other donor support, as a result of which these farming avenues have seen considerable progress in the past few years. - UNDP worked closely with MoFA in introducing the concept of cooperative societies to island communities and successfully establishing Cooperatives that are better capacitated to engage in and expand business ventures. - UNDP supported the development of feasibility studies on the commercialisation of poultry, Autopot and chilli sauce production activities in order to enable private sector engagement in these activities at commercial level. - UNDP helped achieve successful market linkages between community NGOs/cooperatives and the private sector. - UNDP supported the Maldives Food and Drug Authority (MFDA) and MoFA in the initial steps towards development of a standardised quality control system and local certification system for agriculture and value added products. - Knowledge materials for mari-culture activities were developed with UNDP assistance, which can be used by interested private sector parties in taking up commercial mari-culture initiatives.