The success of female farmers in Tajikistan starts with a culture of collaborating, learning, and adapting.
Imagine you are the sole female provider for a family in Khatlon, Tajikistan, a province in which food insecurity is an everyday reality, and the agricultural sector dominates the market. Your livelihood might rely on your ability to sell your apricots, to feed your children uncontaminated milk from one of your cows, or to churn that milk into butter, cream, or cheese. You’d want to know how to best leverage your household’s resources. Once you meet your family’s basic needs, you might consider opportunities outside of the household, such as accessing local fresh markets to sell surplus produce or goods. Ideally, you could turn to your neighbors or others in your community who understand your needs and challenges and have lived your experience.
The above scenario is familiar to Hurinisso Davlatova, a homestead farmer from Khatlon and a single mother. Single parenting is not easy, and ensuring that her children had enough nutritious food was sometimes a challenge. However, the Feed the Future Tajikistan Agriculture and Water Activity (TAWA) is addressing these challenges to food security and financial stability so that smallholder farmers — especially women like Hurinisso — can continue to meet these basic needs while accessing the networks and knowledge they need to feel confident in their abilities to do so.
