Feet on the ground..

Heba from Gaza, 10/09/07. Have you experienced going to a meeting totally ignorant of what’s going to be said or done?. It is interesting when this happens, really. I went to this workshop on assessing the needs for the agricultural sector in Gaza in 2008. I sat there listening in wonderment to words such as, seeds, crops, vaccines etc. The strange thing is that this workshop was originally dedicated to assess the agricultural needs in Gaza to help the donors plan intervention projects. Instead of setting the priorities, the workshop turned to a lengthy discussion of all the obstacles that confront this sector; most importantly, the siege and continuous closures. No fertilizers, no vaccines for animals, no seeds, no seedling, no raw material, no imports and absolutely no exports, no cages, no nothing!! A whole sector that depends on imports and exports is totally crippled by the siege with an unstable market and limited purchasing power. So the farmers plant strawberry, for instance, to export it and they can’t so they sell it in the market for less than the production cost, which results in dumping the market with fruits and vegetables (my marketing classes are paying off …I know).

I remained silent all the time listening to all types of impediments then I raised my hand to talk and had the nerve to say “well, we should include all these obstacles as part of our risk analysis, project scenarios and assumptions and we should plan according to our development vision for the sector; otherwise, our planning would be limited because it merely answers problems that might be temporary “!!! I of all people with all that I see of limitations and boundaries had to say that. How stupid and ideal that sounds. They looked at me, did not comment and continued the discussion. So, if we do not have resources to implement agricultural projects, we will start giving emergent support to farmers and here we go again with relief aid. What’s wrong with relief anyways? It is safer to act with our feet on the ground, I believe. I will try to remember this in the future.