FAO MICRO GARDENING EXPERT: EMON PARMAINA MATAI

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1 Micro-Gardening Introduction Micro Gardening is a special garden that involves the use of locally available materials (usually considered waste items) so as to cultivate variety of crops within a limited space possible to satisfy the family food needs thus improving the family living standard. FAO MICRO GARDENING EXPERT: EMON PARMAINA MATAI

2 Objectives: SO2 Strategic Objective is to: Foster Resilience of Crisis Affected Communities through Improved Agricultural Production, Restoration and Strengthening of Productive Assets, and Supporting Income Generating Activities? Specific objectives: To cope with the stressful situation through gardening Improving social relations between people sharing green units and learning from each other To innovate and adapt the production units to camp conditions Partially subsidize the diet of the refugees and the hosting communities.

3 Micro-gardening in Northeast Nigeria FAO Planned to Target 7,500 Households in Three North-eastern States (Adamawa, Borno and Yobe States) Adamawa State: 1,800 HHs Borno Sate: 4,500 HHs Yobe State: 1,200 HHs

4 Project Areas Coverage Project Number of Micro-gardening HHs Coverage Areas Adamawa Borno Yobe 705/EC /EC /USA (OFDA) TOTAL

5 Implementing Partners Micro-gardening approach will be used inside the formal or informal IDPs camps where the beneficiaries have no access to even small areas. A specific kit will be distributed which comprise seeds, tools, garden soils, Manure, containers and possibly water voucher in some areas. A partnership with UNHCR has been already discussed and at least Eleven LGAs in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. UNHCR has already identified beneficiaries for micro-gardening inside the camps. UNHCR can also ensure the logistics, transport and storage of agricultural inputs in various sites. A preliminary discussion with IOM also shows their interest in supporting small agricultural activities for IDPs and returnees. Collaboration with IOM could be important to better identification of most vulnerable beneficiaries. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the States Ministries of Agriculture of Borno Adamawa and Yobe as well as the institutions responding to the Nigeria crisis will be the main Government s counterparts. FAO will work with downstream partners (Governmental Agencies, national and international NGOs) to implement project activities. FAO will closely work with Implementing Partners (National/International NGOs, State Ministry of Agriculture) in the targeted LGAs ensuring coordination of activities, technical support, monitoring and evaluation. NEMA and SEMA Agencies will also be partners of FAO to coordinate access to beneficiaries inside the camps.

6 Targeting Presently there are still some LGAs in the state of Borno and Yobe that remain inaccessible by road due to the risk of ambushes by Boko Haram and being caught in crossfire with Nigerian Army. In Adamawa state almost all the LGAs are accessible with the exception of Madagali, where some areas remain dangerous especially along the border with Cameroon. In many cases access is limited to the main towns and close surroundings. Therefore Population (IDPs, Returnees and host communities) are living inside the towns with limited access only to the surrounding. IDPs in formal/informal camps are the ones who are more suffering the consequences of the crisis with very limited opportunity to resume their former livelihood. For the Micro-gardening FAO will target the population living in the main town and secured surrounding, including IDPs in formal and informal camps, returnees in the LGAs in phase 3 to 5 of the last Cadre Harmonize.

7 Selection Criteria for the Identification of Beneficiaries FAO will work with the camp coordinators to define the selection criteria based on vulnerability ranking, where the coordinating team identifies the characteristics of the very poor, poor, middle, and better off IDP households including the elderly and disabled persons. Those households meeting the criteria of poor and very poor are identified by the coordinating team and selected for inclusion in the program. The coordinating team will be encouraged to include mostly IDPs in the programme. Household characteristics include household size, available space size, available water per household, available potting mix 9manure and top soils) and productive assets. There is no house-to-house enumeration or census process. Those households selected for the inclusion in the program are then registered. The SP will do a random check of 10% of the registered beneficiaries to see if they are really responding to the criteria defined. An inclusion rate of 10% of non-vulnerable households will imply the rejection of the list.

8 Minimum Requirement Having safe and secure access to space, availability of water and availability of manure and top soils. Minimum agricultural skill for vegetable production

9 Priority households Most vulnerable, insecure households among IDPs Households with large number of family members Wherever possible, preference should be given to women and youths headed households Households with high malnutrition rate of one or more relatives Households with minimum assets (inputs, size of space.)

10 Kit Compositions Vegetable seeds kit 1: Okra, sorrel, amaranthus, cabbage and carrot Vegetable seeds kit 2: Roselle, onion, lettuce, tomato and pepper Hand tools kit 1: Wheel barrow, shovel and garden fork Hand tools kit 2: Watering Can, rake, hoe, head pan and garden knife

11 Conclusion Micro gardening seems to be the most appropriate approach to the alarming situations of the huge numbers of IDPs in the northeastern part of Nigeria and the neighboring countries. It is easily adaptable, affordable, understandable, doable, dependable and flexible. Micro gardening is therefore an eco-friendly sustainable agricultural practice to improve livelihood of the IDPs.

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