semiarid areas usually diversify animal production. Mixed species herds represent a way to spread risk, make better use of resources and reduce farm expenses by integrating low-cost production.

Diversifying income through wage labor and small trade is also a major risk-management strategy farmers of the region use. Small-scale and medium-scale farmers in the Maghreb and the Middle East have a high rate of engaging in a number of activities; almost 45% of Tunisian farmers have an off-farm activity. In the Maghreb countries, off-farm activities have been important for funding and developing agriculture. Now they have become rather "scarce, in the new national and international context due to emigration controls, decrease of national demand in nonskilled labour and high unemployment . . ." (Alary, 2005).

Ex ante risk management used by some groups of farmers in CWANA include crop management and improved farming techniques. These techniques include using droughtresistant crop varieties, fertilization and pest management to increase yields or minimize production failure. However, improved varieties can be more vulnerable to moisture stress and pests. They do better in assured rainfed or irrigated agriculture. Using new technology can generate environmental risk, such as pollution, and carries some long-term risks in soil depletion and genetic uniformity (Ramaswami et al., 2003). These are increasingly affecting farming in intensive production areas of the region, but farmer awareness and management strategies are still lacking.

In several areas of the region, minimizing farm risks includes developing irrigated farming. It stabilizes yields and allows for more intensive and more profitable production. This has led to development of surface and underground irrigation, which in several CWANA countries has led to overexploitation of water resources and increased soil degradation.

The shift from dryland to irrigated farming can generate new risks for farmers. They include environmental problems, the necessity to rely on the credit system, new farming techniques, integrating into collective water management, insufficiently organized marketing circuits and price instability.

Markets for horticulture products are liberalized in most CWANA countries, but they remain poorly organized. Farmers, especially small-scale and medium-scale ones, are usually vulnerable to market risks. These risks can be aggravated by state intervention geared to maintaining low food prices through importing fruits and vegetables. In several irrigated areas of Morocco and Tunisia many farmers have ceased irrigating because of the difficulty in selling their products profitably (Gana and El Amrani, 2006) and returned to dryland farming. Some have shifted the water from horticulture to cereals and forage.

Cereal crops benefit from more stable producer prices, as they are usually state controlled. The high variability of prices for fruits and vegetables, which is also due to the weakness of farmer organizations, is a major hindrance to developing high-value crops in the region. This explains the risk management favored by many farmers is cultivating cereal crops, even if they could diversify or develop other crops. However, a growing proportion of farmers in intensive irrigated farming in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt have found forward contracting a way to reduce market risks.

Among livestock producers, risk management varies according to the size of the farm. Ex ante strategies can use integrating cropping and livestock by cultivating forage crops. These strategies are mostly available to medium and large farms in favored climates. In dry areas, herders often have to resort to the market for forage supply, where prices are unstable and vulnerable to market shock. Finally, ex ante risk management includes crop insurance, which is mostly available to farmers integrated into the bank credit system.

2.2.5.3 Agricultural risk management policies in CWANA

Despite the strategies farm households put in place to mitigate risks, they remain vulnerable to fluctuations in production, consumption and poverty. Therefore the state should intervene. Governmental intervention can include price supports, credit policy, natural resource management policy, promotion of technical change and development of insurance schemes and safety net programs.

In the CWANA region, recent droughts have pushed most countries to implement measures and policies to limit social and economic damage (see next section for drought management policies in CWANA). Policy in Iran, Jordan and Morocco established a national drought program monitored by an intergovernmental committee (National Drought Task Force), usually headed by the Ministry of Agriculture. This political body proposes a set of emergency measures and funds to ease the adverse effects of the drought and assist the affected rural populations. Emergency measures include emergency purchase and distribution of concentrate feed to livestock owners, seed distribution, veterinary prophylaxis, water development and wells for people and livestock, special access to credit, debt relief or agricultural tax relaxation and creation of job opportunities.

However, while these measures helped to mitigate the loss of animals from drought, they have been financially costly. Where they had untargeted distribution of subsidized livestock feed they primarily benefited the larger flock owners. The FAO report stresses that, "Moreover, they have created dependencies on feed supplements and have encouraged the maintenance of larger numbers of animals on the rangelands for longer periods each year, thus accelerating resource degradation. Consequently, the contribution of the natural grazings to total feed supply has fallen dramatically in nearly all Mashreq and Maghreb countries while concentrate feed use has escalated" (FAO, 2002).

Drought management and mitigation in the region consist mostly of short-term drought relief. Drought early warning systems are virtually nonexistent, and national integrated drought-monitoring programs are not operational. Mostly they have limited coordination of information on water supply from irrigation authorities, agricultural extension services and meteorological departments about the extent and impact of drought (De Pauw, 2001). Yet coordinating this information is essential for drought monitoring systems. Hence, there is an urgent need to establish national plans to manage drought more comprehensively and consistently and move from reacting to drought to managing it. Drought could be treated as an integral component of production and a structural feature of the climate.