In Syria little work has been already done at the aim of exploring the current risk-management strategies and policies. However, two main groups of agricultural risk management actions have been distinguished, either ex-ante precautionary (preventive) strategies or ex-post corrective (therapeutic) strategies. Each type combines both official measure applied by the public institutions and informal measure undertaken by individuals.
I.
The public risk-management measures
The role played by the public institutions as ex-post risk management strategies have been shown by the functioning of the relevant ministries and institutions presented in the section (3.2.3.) above. A positive analysis of the current situation of the services provided by those institutions to farmers has been considered the research as the availability of those public bodies to the real beneficiaries.
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The most important services provided to farmers are through the extension units, plant pests and disease protection, veterinary services. The training services provided for the farmers by the agricultural extension staff are considered important ex-ante measures for agricultural yield and price risks. However, 73% of farmers have not received these training services before, while 67% of farmers claim that these services are very useful and effective and can be easily spread among farmers. Extension units help in transferring the modern techniques to farmers concerning the irrigation methods and the new good quality and resistant varieties, however, according to the survey, 84% of farmers still not accessing these services. In addition, the extension unit plays a central role in facilitating process of accessing credits by farmers by reducing the required documents and alleviating the cost of operational procedures and therefore this public institution contributes to reducing the financial risk faced by farmers. However, 85% of farmers have not accessed credit through the help of this institution, and this is because the fact that ACB is the responsible for loans offering while the extension units play just the role of facilitating the progress of borrowing process. The agricultural cooperative are the other example of risk managing institutions working in the agricultural sector and trying to provide many services at the aim of enhancing the farmers yield, income and welfare from one side and insuring the sustainability of the agricultural production activities from the other sides. The cooperatives provide many services to farmers including the acquiring of the inputs and marketing some farmers’ products. Accessing to credits is considered one important task of the cooperatives through the collaboration with ACB, which is one of the most key measures for risk management. However, 45% of cooperative farmers claim that they benefit from this service while other farmers impute their failure to get loans through the cooperatives to the bad performance of cooperatives’ administration resulting in losing the confident dealing with them. Farmers also claim that all other services to be provided by the cooperatives like helping in land preparation, irrigation and harvesting, accessing inputs and marketing facilitating are not working well mainly due to the high rate of corruption characterized most them. ACB is the main government institute for financing the agricultural sector by providing different types of loans for investing in new agricultural projects as for providing the production requirement for the existing plant as animal activities and hence play a vital role from the risk management perspective. However, similar to other public institutions mentioned above, just 34% of farmers are satisfied about the functioning of ACB while other farmers criticize the routine and long official procedures characterizing process of getting the loans.
Given the low efficiency of the public institution in the agricultural risk management as presented by the fragile functioning of the extension units, imposes huge concern about the effectiveness of the official risk
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management strategies. Therefore, much more work should be done regarding the development of the role of these institutions.
More recently, in 2011, the GOS has issued the legislative decree No. 114 which aimed to establish what so called “The Disaster Alleviation Fund” in order to mitigate the effects of drought and natural disaster on agricultural production (plant and animal production) in Syria. The legislative decree No. 114 announced the establishment of the fund at MAAR, in the Drought Management Directorate. The operational procedures of the fund are related to:
(i) covering the expenses measures of responses to drought cases;
(ii) compensating for farmers or group of farmers whose agricultural production is damaged as a result of drought and other adverse climate conditions (frost, high temperatures, flood, dust storm, hail, strong wind and rain intensities) which result in significant material loss in agricultural production, agricultural assets or the owned means of production.
(iii) The compensation should be paid for farmers just when the effect of the adverse event is collective (common) and the adverse negative effect (the damage) is not less than 25% of production or other assets.
The recently established Drought Alleviation Directorate of MAAR, October 11th, 2011 shall follow up and coordinate the activities related to the management of The Disaster Alleviation Fund in coordination with the concerned authorities at different levels (central level, the province and the targeted area). In addition, the directorate should operate and develop of an early warning system for drought and climate change, natural disasters. Moreover, training program of technical personnel has to be carried out in order to implement the drought management activities and to prepare maps and documents necessary to study the effects of drought and climate change. Other task is the development of appropriate criteria for receiving aid, determine the type of aid and the populations affected by drought and assessing the situation after the drought. The directorate is also in charge of communicating with international and regional organizations and scientific bodies involved in monitoring and evaluating the effects of climate change. Finally, by its operational activities, the directorate contributes to strengthening the capacity of local communities on the face of drought and the effects of climate change and natural disasters agricultural. In fact, the Directorate and the Fund act as ex post risk coping strategy alleviating the effect of the risk once the risk has been realized and negatively affected the agricultural agents.
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II.
The individual risk-management measures
Individual ex ante preventive risk management strategies include agricultural and income diversification and specialization as well while ex post corrective risk management strategies include consumption smoothing, borrowing, asset liquidating and working out of agriculture.
According to farmers, the most used ex post strategy is the borrowing followed by consumption smoothing, working out of agriculture and selling the households’ assets respectively. Working out of agriculture is considered the most effective strategy according to the majority of farmers.
Regarding the Ex ante precautionary strategies used by farmers, it is proven that reducing the required inputs quantities and attending a crop rotation are the most applied by farmers to avoid agricultural risks while the strategy of agricultural diversification comes as a second strategy.
However, given the agricultural risks and risk-management situation described above by highlighting the main existing types of risks, risk-management institutions and risk-management strategies as well, it is obvious that much more work should be done at all levels to achieve an acceptable agricultural risk- management level. In fact, the role of different types of institutions both formal and informal in risk management is more oriented to be ex ante risk management with more role plaid by formal ones. In addition, there is no clear framework methodology or mechanisms for ex post risk management like agricultural insurance, but there are emergency solutions deal with each case according to their type and intense. Regardless of the strong reciprocal vertical and horizontal relationships amongst the different institutions working for risk management however, some of these relationships are not strong enough while the others have many discrepancies like those between formal and informal institutions e.g. the contrast between formal laws and informal traditions and norms within some societies.