Armenia – Water-to-Market Activity

Introducing Innovative Growing Techniques to Increase Smallholder Incomes

The fragmentation of the agricultural production base in Armenia is keeping the country’s farm enterprises from achieving the scale necessary for efficient production. Though rural family landholdings average 1.4 hectares, these farms are usually made up of three or more smaller parcels in different locations. As a result, farmers get low yields and inconsistent quality and cannot assemble enough produce to meet market demand.

Limited financial resources and a lack of information about on-farm water usage and pest management have led to widespread use of herbicides and pesticides that come from dubious sources and are applied with rudimentary spraying devices. Due to the small-scale, highly fragmented and diverse production of fruits and vegetables, local marketing is carried out by small traders and even the producers themselves. Thus, throughout rural Armenia, the labor-intensive agricultural sector produces low yields and poor incomes for smallholder farmers.

ACDI/VOCA, in partnership with ARCADIS Euroconsult (Netherlands) and VISTAA (Armenia), was awarded an $18.4 million contract to implement the Water-to-Market (WtM) Activity as part of the Millennium Challenge Armenia (MCA) program. The objective of the project is to accelerate the transition to more profitable agricultural production through the following activities:

• introducing and encouraging best practices in irrigated agriculture
• fostering the adoption of improved water management techniques
• shifting to higher-value crops and livestock
• strengthening the post-harvest and processing enterprises linking producers to their domestic and international end markets
• strengthening the capacity of credit providers to fund viable proposals in production and post-harvest activities

The program was launched in February 2007 and will continue until October 2011.

Under WtM, 60,000 rural farmers will receive training and observe demonstrations in on-farm water management. Approximately 30,000 of these farmers will benefit from training and demonstrations in higher-value farming activities. Three hundred farmer groups and small and medium enterprises (15,000 farmers indirectly) will become more effective in assembling, processing and marketing agricultural production thanks to the training, technical assistance and capital they receive under the project. The direct impact of the WtM activity will be employment generation and increased incomes for farmers and rural businesses. The program will also create synergy between rural infrastructure development and agribusiness development. The result will be a significant, sustainable reduction in rural poverty.

The WtM project has reached all 10 marzes, or provinces, through its training and credit programs and established demonstration sites. As of March 2009, other results include the following:

• 23,299 farmers completed the on-farm water management training
• 7,663 farmers completed the high-value agriculture training
• 35 on-farm water management demonstration sites established, including the installation of irrigation improvements and technical innovations in order to provide field training for farmers
• an additional 53 demonstration sites established for high-value agriculture
• 90 enterprises assisted under the post-harvest, processing and marketing component
• $1.5 million worth of loans approved for 125 WtM beneficiaries from 11 financial institutions accredited by MCA

ACDI/VOCA’s approach in Armenia is creating long-term change to achieve higher agricultural production levels and raise rural incomes. WtM stimulates the agricultural sector in Armenia with market-driven interventions at all levels of the value chain, including improved farm water management and production, sorting, packing and delivery of product to processors and markets, and effective export marketing.

For more information contact Gevorg Adamyan at gadamyan@acdivoca.org.

Updated: 5/09

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