Incentives Driving Economic Alternatives for the North, East and West (IDEA-NEW) Monthly Report—October 2013

Agency for International Development's (USAID) Office of Agriculture. The program's mission is to support the stabilization and transition of Afghanistan by expanding the licit agricultural economy in the northern, eastern and western regions of the country. IDEA-NEW focuses on activities that promote income generation and job creation through increased commercial agricultural opportunities for Afghan farmers in poppy-prone areas. IDEA-NEW's programming is centered around eight value chains: grapes, orchard crops, vegetables, poultry, wheat, silk, honey and karakul. The program works closely with provincial- and district-level government and local communities to build strong relationships among local stakeholders. Three partners implement IDEA-NEW: Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) programs in the East and West, ACDI/VOCA operates in the North, and Mercy Corps works in the Northeast. In October 2013, IDEA-NEW's activities in the Northeast region came to an end, with all projects handed over to the relevant Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) line departments in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kunduz and Takhar province. Other highlights from the past month included the Kunduz Almond Producers Cooperative (KAPC) obtaining its Fairtrade certification from FLO CERT, the Fairtrade Labeling Organization's certification arm. IDEA-NEW's value chain interventions include the grape value chain, where the program held the fourth and final round of field days in all 25 of its demonstration vineyards. A total of 400 grape producers, Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (DAIL) extension workers and agriculture retailers attended the events. Program staff presented the yield figures from 19 demonstration plots and compared them to those of a neighboring vineyard that used traditional cultivation techniques. In support of its vineyard trellising project in the North, IDEA-NEW works with four private companies to manufacture the required concrete posts in Samangan, Sari Pul and Faryab. The program also helped establish two private sector partners (PSPs) to produce trellising posts for vineyard owners in Balkh and Jawzjan. IDEA-NEW signed two purchase orders with its post manufacturing partners in Balkh and Jawzjan, which produced, respectively, 450 and 500 posts during October. As of October 31, 2013, IDEA-NEW had trellised a total of 48.34 hectares of land in Faryab, Jawzjan, Balkh, Samangan and Sari Pul. A breakdown by province is as follows: Samangan (9.92 ha), Faryab (17.34 ha), Sari Pul (8.11 ha), Jawzjan (5.96 ha), and Balkh (7.02 ha). Since the inception of the trellising project in 2009, 37,270 posts have been produced out of which 35,250 were installed in 46.65 ha of converted vineyards in all five Northern provinces. IDEA-NEW's Institutional Capacity Development (ICD) team trained 200 Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) employees in the East in project management, fruit tree pruning and grafting or agribusiness and marketing. Monitoring visits to 137 orchards in Faryab provinces that were established in 2013 with IDEA-NEW assistance revealed a fruit tree survival rate of 97%.