ROME – Iraq and the United Nations launched a campaign Monday to vaccinate nearly one million livestock in the Mosul area over fears the animals may be carrying diseases, as they have not been vaccinated since Islamic State seized the city in 2014.In late July, Iraqi security forces wrested back control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, three years after Islamic State had declared it the de facto capital of its “caliphate”.Over the next two to three months, FAO will be providing the vaccines for Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture to vaccinate the animals against six diseases. In addition, some 60,000 animals would also receive high-nutrient feeds.

“If immediate measures are not taken, the effects on livestock production and food security could be devastating,” Fadel El-Zubi, representative for the U.N.’s food agency in Iraq, said in a statement.

If the livestock are carrying highly contagious epidemic diseases, they could “spread rapidly across national and international borders to other herds and people,” the statement by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) added.

The diseases that could spread include tuberculosis, a bacterial disease transmitted to humans through contaminated or unpasteurized milk of infected animals, and foot and mouth disease, a highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease affecting hoofed animals but not a direct threat to humans.

The livestock to be vaccinated are nearly one million sheep, goats, cattle and buffalo belonging to 210,000 Sunni Muslim herders who were living in Islamic State’s strongholds in the area, said Paul Schlunke, FAO’s senior emergency response coordinator in Iraq.

These herders rely on livestock for food and income but are in areas where there is no natural fodder for the animals. They are unable to travel to access feed due to sectarian tensions, he said.

“If they lose their livestock, they lose their livelihoods, they lose their source of food security,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Iraq.

Some 12 million Iraqis – about a third of the population – live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods with cattle, goats and sheep raised for meat, wool, milk and skin production, according to the FAO.Years of conflict in Iraq have had devastating effects on the agricultural sector, with harvests, equipment, livestock, seeds and stored food destroyed or damaged, it added.

Nearly a million civilians fled Mosul during Islamic State’s rule and the nine-month offensive to recapture the northern city, according to the United Nations.

“This was an excellent intervention,” said Tony Raad, head of the Qobaiyat Agricultural Cooperative. “The feedback we have been getting from farmers has been very positive. To start, now they have access to water; also, with the drip irrigation, their work has become much less labor-intensive in comparison with flood irrigation. Now all they need to do is open and close a valve.”

As a bonus, farmers are saving money on pesticides because drip irrigation significantly limits the growth of weeds, Raad added.

The impact of this intervention will continue long after the five-year USAID project has completed its work with the Safadi Foundation and the cooperative. LWP has helped connect the cooperative to an international NGO, which was looking to implement projects in the region. With these supplementary funds, the cooperative has been able to connect more farmers to the main line that LWP installed. To date, 21 additional farmers have benefited from the main distribution line.

Since agriculture consumes more than 70 percent of all available water in Lebanon, targeting farmers to switch to water-efficient irrigation methods made a lot of sense.

For this reason, LWP worked with farmers cultivating a variety of water-loving crops. These include wine and table grapes, potatoes, corn fodder, vegetables, and apples.Newly installed drip irrigation and water filtration systems are allowing Lebanese farmers to save water as they grow everything from apples and potatoes to grapes. Photo credit: Mahmoud Rida/LWP

In one region in Mount Lebanon, LWP partnered with the Beirut and Mount Lebanon Water Establishment to install drip irrigation and filtration systems for more than 67 farmers, who had been using traditional flood irrigation for generations to irrigate their apple orchards. With this intervention, 219,000 square meters (54 acres) of land became water-efficient, their irrigation efficiency increasing from 32 percent to 56 percent.