Agricultural Development Association (Palestinian Agricultural Relief)

The Agricultural Development Association (PARC) has become more responsive to the needs and rights of marginalized people as a result of the development and application of a range of strategies and development models for agricultural improvement during last ten years.

Hence, PARC is aware of the challenges faced by the agricultural and other sectors in strategy and technique development, and its obstacles, including natural and man-made disasters. In addition, there are two main concerns. The confiscation of the civil rights and the occupation of the lands of Palestinian people, denying their sovereignty on one side, and poverty and deprivation of sustainable livelihood opportunities as a result of the unfair economic and social policies on the other side.

PARC’s strategy takes into account the citizens’ right to further improve their economic, social, and political status and other rights endorsed within international conventions. The very core of its philosophy is development of the agricultural and other related sector.

PARC acknowledge that agriculture plays a key role towards freedom and liberation by achieving the sovereignty of their resources, in particular, land and water. Moreover, the agricultural sector assists in the prioritization of national products over foreign products, strengthening the control of the national markets.

PARC aims to achieve resilience and sustainable development overcoming the crises in the sector through the following economic and social strategies:

Decreasing the cost of agriculture production, both livestock and crop, and gradually increasing the agricultural productivity and yields.
Stopping all wrong practices and overcoming the absence of monitoring by developing natural resource management mechanisms.
Strengthening farmers’ organizations including charitable and cooperative organizations.
Improving the private sector partnership and building bridges of trust between small and large producers to fairly achieve both parties’ interests.
Focusing on more responsive approaches towards youth aspirations to enhance inclusion as a keystone in the development of the agricultural sector.
Strengthening monitoring and managing risks capacities of farmers, improving their contribution to the protection and early warning systems, as well as enhancing stability across production sectors.
Strengthening the innovation and entrepreneurship within the agricultural sector through interventions leading to increasing investment and technology taking into account the specific characteristics of the Palestinian context.
Enabling Palestinian women to gain back its role in the agricultural economy, both formal and non-formal to assure the sustainability of food security in the long term.
Increasing coordination and identifying common goals to encourage business partnerships between different active actors from all sectors, facing the lack of a defined identity and actors within the agricultural sector.
Integrating innovation mechanisms and needs-based interventions that address climate as a cross-border aspect of future challenges within agricultural practices.
Enhancing agronomist key role, initiative and responsibilities in all working phases to further improve their careers by increasing cooperation with Palestinian universities, which offer academic programs in the field of agronomy and agricultural engineering.
Facilitating the access to markets and introducing marketing solutions that ensure the access of small-scale producers to markets and their profit during the post-production phase avoiding the structural imbalances that often lead to the fail of the whole process. Note that this topic has a special interest within PARC’s medium and long-term agendas.
Ensuring the development of new agricultural policies based on the sector challenges, relationships with different actors and all previous good practices.