TITLE II FOOD SECURITY PROGRAM
Improved Economic Sustainability in Food Insecure Areas

USAID’s Title II Food Security program uses food and local currency to support community efforts to overcome development constraints and enhance household food security. Efforts are focused on creating opportunities for impoverished families in the poorest regions of the country to achieve sustainable improvements in income. To help build a foundation for sustainable development, the program supports (1) increased incomes for small producers; (2) improved maternal-child health; (3) extending water and sanitation services; and (4) better natural resource management. The Food Security Program directly supports the Bolivia Digna and Bolivia Productiva pillars of the National Development Plan (PND) of the Government of Bolivia.

Through the Title II Program, USAID works in areas of extreme food insecurity providing benefits to more than 10 percent of the Bolivian population identified through a comprehensive study in all nine departments.  In the last five years, this program has successfully helped to reduce chronic malnutrition, improve family incomes, and provide access to clean water and sanitation for more than one million people living in rural and peri-urban areas of La Paz, Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, Potosí and Tarija Departments.

Program activities emphasize project sustainability by focusing on the involvement and cooperation of municipalities, partner institutions and beneficiaries.  Title II projects are implemented through an “Inter-Institutional Agreement” with the relevant municipal government and the local community.  One characteristic of these agreements is that counterpart funds are provided by municipal governments through the Popular Participation Law.  By working through municipalities and obtaining counterpart contributions ranging between 10 to 30 percent of the total contribution, the program promotes local ownership and sustainability.

Title II activities seek:

• Increased Rural Incomes. For the majority of Bolivians who earn their livelihood from agricultural activities, low productivity and reduced access to markets mean stagnant incomes and high levels of food insecurity.  The main objective of the Rural Incomes Initiative is to provide better family revenue in food insecure areas through improvements in agricultural productivity and market access for their products. For this purpose, USAID works with the communities to provide technology, market linkages and productive infrastructure, such as irrigation projects and rural access roads.

• Maternal and Child Health. One of the reasons for persistent child malnutrition in Bolivia is the lack of knowledge about appropriate feeding practices. Title II activities seek to improve the transition between food assistance and the development of long-term, community-level strategies to reduce high rates of child mortality. This initiative aims at reducing morbidity and malnutrition among children below the age of three through direct assistance and the targeting of pregnant and lactating mothers. This objective is achieved through a comprehensive program of vaccines and other health services, growth promotion, food rations for certain individuals and nutrition education.

• Water and Basic Sanitation. USAID increases access to potable water and to improve the sanitary conditions for households in the food insecure areas of Bolivia.

• Natural Resource Management.  Sustainable increases in food availability are gained by conserving and rehabilitating the natural resource base which sustains agricultural productivity and rural economies. USAID supports community training on soil conservation, adaptation of irrigation methods to specific topographic conditions, and improvement of forage through the propagation and protection of desired native species or the introduction of other appropriate species.

Disaster Assistance

The Title II Food Security Unit is also in charge of USAID/Bolivias’s Disaster Assistance Program, which works with the Government of Bolivia and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to coordinate responses to natural disasters. Relief activities provide emergency rations and temporary shelters. This program has helped bring relief to thousands of people affected by natural disasters and economic losses.

Program Impact

• USAID’s Title II Food Security Unit works in more than 1,000 communities of the most food insecure areas in the country.

• Between 2002 and 2006, the Title II program reached nearly one million people through its different components (income generation, maternal-child health and nutrition, water supply and sanitation and natural resources management).

• USAID-funded water and sanitation systems reach nearly 3,000 and 11,000 families, respectively.

• In the last five years, the income regeneration program has doubled the incomes of participating beneficiaries, from $630 to over $1,300.

• A conservation program to protect the endangered Red-Fronted Macaw is providing the tools for eco-tourism, to benefit communities in surrounding areas of the Toro Toro National Park, in the Northern Potosi.

• During 2006 and 2007, the U.S. Government contributed over $2 million in humanitarian aid and emergency relief for the flooding disasters.  USAID assistance reached dozens of municipalities in six departments.