August 15, 2007

ACDI/VOCA’s MCA-Armenia Water-to-Market Selects Villages for Training

ACDI/VOCA’s $18.4 million Armenia Water-to-Market Activity (WTM), which is funded through the Millennium Challenge Account-Armenia (MCA-Armenia), has announced the training schedule for villages identified to participate in the project.

ACDI/VOCA and its partners Arcadis Euroconsult and VISTAA Plus implement the WTM to accelerate the transition of Armenian smallholder farmers to more profitable agricultural production. This is done by introducing and encouraging best practices in irrigated agriculture, fostering the adoption of improved water management techniques, strengthening the post-harvest and processing enterprises linking producers to their markets and strengthening the capacity of credit providers to fund viable proposals in production and post-harvest activities.

The training programs within this activity will target 60,000 farmers over a period of five years. WTM has now identified the communities to be served in the next four years of the program. To ensure fairness and transparency, random selection of the communities was determined to be the best method, and Mathematica Policy Research, a U.S.-based independent evaluator contracted by MCA-Armenia, provided technical support in developing a software program to make the selections.

MCA-Armenia aims to reduce rural poverty through a sustainable increase in the economic performance of the agricultural sector. MCA-Armenia plans to achieve this goal through a five-year program of strategic investments in rural roads, irrigation infrastructure and technical and financial assistance to improve the supply of water and to support farmers and agribusinesses. The program will have a direct impact on approximately 750,000 people, or an estimated 75 percent of the rural population, and is expected to reduce the rural poverty rate and boost annual incomes.