Gaza Strip: Scale-up in FAO’s conditional cash for farmers projected to help feed 100 000 people over the next year

Jerusalem/Cairo - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) scaled up its conditional cash assistance program to support a total of 1 500 small-scale farmers in the Gaza Strip to cultivate at least 1 dunum (0.1 ha) of land each. Through this support, FAO projects that the farmers will produce enough fresh vegetables to meet the recommended annual vegetable intake for approximately 100 000 people, based on dietary recommendations from FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO).

The initiative is funded by Belgium, the European Union, the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, and other FAO resource partners.

The cash assistance is conditional on farmers using the support to cultivate their land.

"Farmers in the Gaza Strip are determined to resume local food production on every plot and every dunum available for cultivation, even as they are squeezed into rapidly shrinking space. The results of FAO's recent pilot in the Strip are clear: FAO's conditional cash enables farmers to purchase for scarce and expensive inputs, and begin planting immediately, while awaiting the restoration of commercial imports of essential agricultural inputs", said Ciro Fiorillo, Head of Office, FAO West Bank and Gaza Strip.

FAO's conditional cash support for the 2026 planting season builds on the success of a 2025 pilot initiative that supported 200 households in producing plant fresh vegetables. The FAO-supported farmers are estimated to have cultivated at least 720 dunums and produced 1 094 metric tonnes (MT) of fresh vegetables, including eggplants, hot peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and molokhia. This production was sufficient to meet the recommended annual vegetable intake of more than 13 000 people. The pilot initiative was funded by the occupied Palestinian territory Humanitarian Fund (oPt HF).

Despite the impressive results from farmers who receive FAO's conditional cash, the Gaza Strip agrifood sector's recovery continues to be constrained by limited cropland availability and the low affordability and local availability of agricultural production inputs.

"One-off approvals allowing private sector and humanitarian actors to bring production inputs into Gaza are not sufficient. Farmers, herders and fishers must be able to access land, sea and a variety of production inputs, such as seeds, fertilizers, irrigation equipment, animal feed, veterinary supplies, fertilized eggs to restart commercial poultry farms, boats and fishing gear", Fiorillo said.

"The commercial sector is best placed to supply the right combination of inputs at the right time for farmers and must be allowed the full and unrestricted entry of agricultural production items. This should begin with the liberalization of at least non-dual-use items by local importers that had are specialized in food production, had active trade relationships with local suppliers, were registered before the conflict and are still active", Fiorillo said.