LINKING SUSTAINABLE FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY TO SOCIAL

PROTECTION PROGRAMMES

Background

• 83% of 1.8 million Basotho resides in rural setting and relies on subsistence agriculture as a main livelihood

• However, agriculture production and productivity along with its share to the GDP has been is declining due to among others:

– cumulative impact of natural disasters and effects of climate change

– Environmental degradation, loss of soil fertility and poor rangelands

– high prevalence of poverty (57% of population)– high prevalence of HIV and AIDS (25% of population)

Social Protection in Lesotho as part of GoL National Vision 2020 and the SDGs

Current social protection initiatives:

–Old Age Pension (OAP)– Child Grant Programme (CGP)–Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)

Bursary– Public Assistance (PA)– School Feeding (SF)– Post Primary Bursary (PPB)– Integrated Watershed Management Public

Works (IWM)

2013-2014 pilot project of linking food security to social protection

• Drought in 2012 led to the identification of 725,000 (40% of population) people to be in need of humanitarian assistance

• The Government of Lesotho and FAO initiated Linking Food

Security to Social Protection (LFSSP) pilot complementing the Ministry of Social Development’s Child Grant Programme (CGP) with a home gardening and nutrition (HGN) kit

– CGP covers 25,000 households: quarterly cash transfers to poor households with orphans and vulnerable children

– HGN kit to 800 households for the pilot: 600g of vegetables (beetroot, spinach, Florida broad leaf, onions, carrot, and English rape), training material, and shade net

2013-2014 pilot project of linking food security to social protection

Main findings of impact evaluation conducted by FAO’s Social Protection Team:

+ Labour constrained households increased their home gardening activities and thus increased proportion of their vegetable harvesting (diversified) and reduced food insecurity

+ Labour non-constrained households increased their investment productive assets, perhaps with intentions of scaling up agricultural operations

- Increase in children’s time (especially younger girls) devoted to own-farm and non-farm enterprise work activities (more research required to understand the implications)

2016: National upscale within El Nino drought response

• Informed by the results of the 2013-14 pilot, the current emergency response, GoL and FAO are complementing Social Protection programmes with improved agriculture production capacity:

– Home gardening and nutrition kits to 65,000 hhs benefiting from SP cash transfers or emergency cash transfers (22,000hhs supported by Nov 2016)

– Livelihood support (staple crops and vegetables) to 25,000 hhs (vulnerable active farmers)

Thank you.