The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched an Anticipatory Action programme in Myanmar with an aim to help farmers boost production and plant in time for the monsoon season to provide them with bountiful harvests
The programme is targeting both newly displaced people and rural host families with a combination of vegetable kits, poultry feed, rice seeds and fertilisers.
Somsak Pipoppinyo, programme officer for FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, said, “We are seeing major disruptions across the country, especially to key transport and value chains and rising prices for key imported products such as cooking oil and fertilisers. We must act on these warnings and prevent rural families and newly displaced people from losing access to food. We must stop this unfolding crisis in its tracks.”
Reda Lebtahi, emergency and rehabilitation coordinator, FAO, Myanmar, explained, “We no longer have to wait for disasters to strip away people’s hard-earned assets before we act to help them. We have the data to predict where shocks will hit and the tools to make sure families don’t have to start from zero every time that happens. With all of that at our disposal, it’s our duty to act, and anticipatory action is the way to do it.”
Anticipatory action is at the heart of the new way of working that humanitarian and development organisations need to adopt if they want to effectively protect lives and livelihoods from any number of hazards, either climate or human induced. With Anticipatory Action, FAO is at the vanguard of a faster, more dignified approach to humanitarian interventions -- one that prevents crises before they occur and protects personal and global development gains along the way.
FAO's work on Anticipatory Action is funded by Germany, the European Union, Belgium and Sweden. The project in Myanmar is made possible with the support of the German Federal Foreign Office.
