Agricultural Production Intensification Project

This seven-year project encompasses the three governorates of Al Minya, Al Fayoum and Beni Suief and is working with almost 1 million rural households that are landless, have small landholdings, or are headed by women. The project is bringing a range of support services – research, extension and credit – to these households, in order to help them rapidly adopt technology that will improve their productivity and intensify land use. This is extremely important, given the limited potential for bringing further land into production.

The project is using a “whole-farm” approach in order to create research and extension activities that address the real needs of the small farmers. It builds on the previous successes of the “travel and visiting“ system that was used in two previous IFAD-funded projects, extending the system to Beni Suief. The extension system has been broadened to include livestock, a relatively neglected area in Egypt. At least 50 per cent of the farmers will need credit to enable them to adopt new crop and livestock technologies. The project supports credit to accomplish this. By developing new lending methods, the project has already improved access to credit for 50 per cent of the users who were previously barred from the existing credit facility.

Source: IFAD