Food Security

This will be the first TO under the USAID/Armenia Resilience Single Holder IDIQ. The RFTOP will be released together with the IDIQ RFP.

Goal: Increase domestic production of critical agricultural value chains to increase food security and reduce dependence on imports.

Result Area 1: Increased efficiency and production of critical crops for domestic consumption

- Establish baseline to determine where opportunities for increased production of staple crops exist.
- Re-introduce extension services to provide knowledge support to farmers for more efficient production.
- Increase collaboration among farmers to achieve efficiencies and economies of scale.
- Support mechanization, improved seeds, storage, and other measures to improve yields and reduce post-harvest losses

Result Area 2: Agriculture sector knowledge management

- In partnership with National Agrarian University, strengthen digital agriculture capacity through development of a publicly accessible, web-based agriculture information dashboard, and productive use mapping tool.
- Data collection and maintenance, dissemination, and access for risk identification, planning, and decision making for farmers, private sector actors, and government as part of agricultural information tool above.
- Increase public and farmer awareness of economic opportunities related to agricultural production
- Content development for web-based access/social media for enhanced farmer information and training purposes.
- Bring to scale existing ANAU’s youth engagement programs and expand offerings at secondary school, vocational education, and higher education levels.

Result Area 3: Disaster Preparedness and Resilience

- Expand early warning capacity to include risk assessment related to medium to longer term threats that have an impact on food security.
- Establish coordination and risk assessment mechanism inclusive of the university, government, and private sector to consider and discuss threats and mitigations to food systems and security.
- Increase availability of public information regarding risks and threats to the food systems and improving collection of related data.
- Expand University’s capacity to improve available data for surveillance of pests and biothreats to contribute to national early warning and management.

Result Area 4: Rapid Response/Windows of Opportunity

- Support shorter term recovery from unanticipated events or disasters that threaten the food system in the transition between emergency response and development activities.
- Support grant for specific, innovative activities requested by women or youth entrepreneurs for testing purposes or bringing to scale agribusiness and digital agriculture opportunities.
- Provide studies, research, or analysis requested by government or farmers to help understand threat or risk and possible responses.
- Provide specialized technical assistance on a limited basis to address a specific risk, threat, or opportunity.