Speeches Shim
In a brightly-lit room in southwest Tajikistan in late September, 30 men and women gathered to bid on land use rights in the country’s first-ever public land auction. Transferring land use rights from the state to private individuals, in a transparent and fair process, marks a major milestone on Tajikistan’s journey to self-reliance. When Tajikistan declared independence in 1991, all of its agricultural lands were part of large-scale Soviet-era collective farms. Since then, the Government of Tajikistan’s land reform efforts have made tangible progress, but up to 35 percent of the country’s agricultural lands remain under state control.
Due to low livestock yield and dairy cow productivity in Tajikistan’s agriculture sector, farms are replacing their existing dairy cattle with more productive ones through natural and artificial insemination. The Feed the Future Tajikistan Agriculture and Water Activity supports efforts to introduce more productive dairy cow breeds through a cost-share program focused on technical and financial assistance to value chain actors like Abduvali Obidov, who has been working as a veterinarian for public and private enterprises for over 30 years. In cooperation with the project, Obidov has established and now operates a fully equipped artificial insemination point with the goal of providing high quality veterinary services, including natural and artificial insemination, to improve the genetics of local dairy cattle. In the long run, this will lead to increased dairy and meat production in Khatlon district where the project is operating.
Shahnoza, LLC is a small-scale agri-enterprise based in Jayhun district in southwest Tajikistan. The company was started by Abdughafor Qurbonov in 1999 and, over time, has diversified its agricultural activities from lemon production and a range of home-produced value-added products to introducing strawberry production for the first time in 2017. With his wife and four children, Qurbonov worked hard to enlarge his production area to three hectares, but faced challenges with marketing the produce, in particular the strawberries, as both he and his hired labor lacked the skills to sort, grade, and pack the strawberries to meet the requirements of higher-value markets.
On Thursday, November 21, USAID Asia Deputy Assistant Administrator (DAA) Javier Piedra and Vice Minister of Energy, Republic of Kazakhstan, Sungat Yessimkhanov signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of the United States Agency for International Development and the Government of Kazakhstan to help establish a Central Asian regional electricity market.
In sunny southwestern Tajikistan, Aysifat Norbekova was thrilled when a senior tashabbuskor (a local activist) invited her to interview to join their network. Tashabbuskors are community activists who receive training from the Feed the Future Land Market Development Activity to provide consultations for farmworkers in their home districts, and there are 67 tashabbuskors in the network.
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