Beekeeping for Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Rural Livelihood Submitted by: Nader Hajj Shehadeh Submitted to: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Implementing Agency: EWB-Lebanon May 05, 2012 0 Project Development Report ABSTRACT Around 21% if the Lebanese population lives in the poor zone, with 39% of them living under conditions of extreme poverty, most of which inhabit in rural areas. It is becoming a challenge to empower rural regions and prevent deteriorating living conditions from spreading in remote areas. The areas where agricultural activities are mainly concentrated, characterizing with insufficient diversification and high risk due to unstable environmental conditions. In these regions, the majority of people live on subsistence farming and producing few crops, which makes them vulnerable to shocks of all kinds. What is really needed to alleviate living conditions and improve the situation of rural farmers is a low risk high revenue activity that provides them with additional revenue and acts as an aiding activity. Poverty is a main characteristic of remote rural areas, but not the only one. Rural regions of Lebanon are rich in trees and diversified plants, which makes it very suitable for beekeeping and honey production activities. But because of the lack in income and technical experience in this field, farmers have been tending to avoid beekeeping and limiting their activities to traditional farming only, which is eventually affecting the whole ecosystem, and further exacerbating the problems of livelihood. Engineers Without Borders Lebanon launched a project to support farmers in rural regions in Lebanon through a small scale project as a first step to portray the untapped potential for strategically investing in apiculture, particularly in beekeeping, as a viable alternative means of income for the most disadvantaged families in rural areas of Lebanon. This would further increase the capacity of the community to break out of poverty. The project constitutes of two phases. The fist starts with one family that will be committed to provide EWB-Lebanon with the swarming colonies. The second phase identifies a new family and provides it with bee colonies to repeat the same process as in phase 1. i The project supports poor families in rural areas of Lebanon through introducing the concept of sustainable beekeeping and providing them with education, financial support, and technical cooperation in the field. Aiming at achieving the following results: 1) Increase the technical knowledge and skills of small scale beekeepers 2) Increase the income of beneficiaries 3) Provide the transition to ecological honey production 4) Provide safe and healthy honey to consumer 5) Promote working groups and networking potential The project period starts in 2012 and ends in 2014, with an overall budget of $4,400, of which $1,200 are in kind contribution, and 1,700 are secured through a contribution from EWB- Lebanon and a sponsorship by an environmental company. The rest $1,500 are required for second phase of the project and would be secured through fundraising and sponsorships. This report presents the project implemented by EWB-Lebanon in partial fulfillment of the CAS in Management of Development Projects, and states the steps taken and the achievements accomplished in collaboration with local partners. The contents of the report are not meant to provide a project evaluation or a complete project proposal; it is limited to project description and presentation of major activities. Keywords: Beekeeping, Rural development, Apiculture, Sustainable rural livelihood ii LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND APPENDICES Figure 1: The major five beekeeping capital assets 4 Figure 2: The action plan timeline for phase 1 9 Table 1: Logical framework analysis 6 Table 2: Action plan for the first phase of the project 8 Table 3: Responsibility Matrix 10 Table 4: Budget of the project over the three phases 11 Table 5: Financing of the project in its three phases 12 Table 6: The major steps of project evaluation 17 Appendix A: The Survey Questionnaire 20 Appendix B: Results of Survey: Major obstacles and problems 23 Appendix C: Selection Criteria of the Family 24 Appendix D: List of material needed for phase 1 25 Appendix E: Beekeeper’s manual 26 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract _____________________________________________________________________ i List of Figures, Tables, and Appendices ___________________________________________ iii Introduction __________________________________________________________________ 1 Background______________________________________________________________________ 1 Project Description ________________________________________________________________ 1 Project Planning _______________________________________________________________ 3 Baseline Analysis and Needs Assessment ______________________________________________ 3 Project Design____________________________________________________________________ 4 Logical Framework ________________________________________________________________ 6 Project Implementation ________________________________________________________ 7 Implementation Strategy ___________________________________________________________ 7 Financing _______________________________________________________________________ 11 Feasibility Analysis _______________________________________________________________ 13 Implementation Achievements __________________________________________________ 14 Monitoring and Evaluation System _______________________________________________ 16 Monitoring _____________________________________________________________________ 16 Evaluation ______________________________________________________________________ 16 Conclusion __________________________________________________________________ 18 Challenges ______________________________________________________________________ 18 SustainabIlity of the Project _______________________________________________________ 18 Appendices __________________________________________________________________ 20 iv INTRODUCTION BACKGROUND Lebanon is a developing country in the Middle East with a urbanization rate of around 90% and growing. In this high middle income country, it is becoming a challenge to empower rural regions and prevent demoted living conditions from spreading in remote areas, where agricultural activities are mainly concentrated. Poverty is a main characteristic of remote rural areas in Lebanon, which is mainly caused by the lack of diversified source of income. Beekeeping is known to have many attractions for rural farmers, as this activity does not require daily attention and does not really take up valuable land or time which would have been spent on other farming activities. In rural communities where availability of financing is limited and constricted to certain agricultural activities, small-scale beekeeping can contribute significantly to livelihood security. It is estimated that there are around 5,250 beekeepers in Lebanon running around 175,000 beehives all over the country. The market is dominated by big beekeeping industrialists with massive honey production, each running more than 200 beehives. While small beekeepers have no more than 20 beehives each with most of them with less than 10 beehives mainly dedicated for honey production. The number of small beekeepers is decreasing tremendously, caused mainly by the uncontrolled loss of beehives and improper implementation of technical skills. PROJECT DESCRIPTION The project starts by selecting one poor family from a rural region in Lebanon with previous experience in beekeeping, and works closely with the family members to reconsider beekeeping as a side activity to help produce natural honey. The family is supplied with the tools and equipment needed to perform beekeeping activities, and provided with bee colonies in eight beehives to be raised and used for honey as well as queen bee production. 1 The role of EWB-Lebanon is to provide the material and lead training and educational sessions in partnership with local experts in the field. The beneficiary is committed to keep close coordination with the organization for a period of two years, reporting problems and following the recommendations of the team leader. This all is offered to the beekeeper free of charge, the only requirement the family should commit to is to capture and keep the new bee colonies created through artificial or natural swarming in good condition for the period of two years. EWB-Lebanon will collect the new colonies and use them to implement a similar activity in the second phase of the project with another underdeveloped family. EWB-Lebanon has the right to perform artificial swarming only once for each beehive during the project period. The beekeeper is also asked to participate in future training sessions and train other beekeepers in later phases of the project. The second phase of the project starts while still coordinating with the first beneficiary. During this phase the same process will be repeated with a new family to create a sustainable activity at reduced costs. PROJECT SUMMARY Title: Beekeeping for Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Rural Livelihood Organization: Engineers Without Borders – Lebanon (www.ewb-lebanon.org) Donor: Green Arms (www.greenarms.co.uk) Partner: Eiffel Association for Beekeeping Location: Underdeveloped rural regions in Lebanon Period: 2012 – 2014 Target Group: Former beekeepers and unemployed young people Overall Budget: $4,400 Team Leader: Nader Hajj Shehadeh ([email protected]) 2 PROJECT PLANNING The project cycle includes two major phases starting with the design phase that involves baseline analysis, needs assessment, and project design, and then the implementation phase including planning, implementation, and followed by a monitoring and evaluation system. BASELINE ANALYSIS AND NEEDS ASSESSMENT In order to learn about the current situation and the problems facing the target group, a participatory approach baseline analysis is performed to better understand the reality of the issues, how they interrelate, how they evolved, and how urgent they rank. Needs assessment is also performed to identify, prioritize, and level the needs. The target group in this case is the local community, which makes it most appropriate to start the situation analysis there and then extend the perspective gradually. So the ripple starts with the inhabitants of rural areas who live in poor conditions, and then moves out to the farmers and families conducting agricultural activities. These groups are met randomly in poor regions of the country and interviewed to understand their needs and problems. The third level includes meetings with beekeepers and those who used to be in business but stopped for any reason, to conclude with a fourth level that included beekeeping experts and suppliers who have good experience about the situation in rural areas and the problems facing small scale beekeepers. The research performed has identified a root cause of poverty in the rural regions of the country, which turned out to be the lack of diversified sources of income and the restriction to certain agricultural activities. It also reached basic conclusions regarding the decrease in beekeeping activities and giving away this additional source of income. It was clear that the low technical skills and the lack of financial support have been playing a major role in reducing the interest of local farmers and agricultural workers in beekeeping and honey production. The survey questionnaire is originally performed in Arabic. A translated version with the results of the survey is presented in appendices A and B. 3 On another note, national reports and studies show that Lebanon imports around 50% of its honey consumption, which is due to the insufficiency of honey supplied locally. This has raised the issue of the instauration of the market, and the deficit in supply that has not been able to meet the demand. From this perspective, honey products seem to still have enough room in the market, which is tending to demand local production rather than imported products. PROJECT DESIGN The overall project’s target group is selected to be poor farmers from rural areas, with an aim to provide them with additional sources of income and reduce their insecurity. Honey production has been reported to be a reliable revenue generating activity, with a very high rate of business development. The results of survey conducted among farmers and rural inhabitants, this activity seems to be interesting and favored by almost all respondents, but should be provided with sufficient technical and financial support. To do so, the five major capital assets of beekeeping are identified and discussed individually to remove barriers and create sustainability in this activity, based on which the actions and initiatives are planned to compliment the needs of the beekeepers as identified through the needs assessment process. The main assets are shown in Figure 1. Natural Financial Social Beekeeping Capital Assets Physical Human Figure 1: The major five beekeeping capital assets 4