Community Action in Integrated and Market Oriented Feed-Livestock Production in Central and South Asia Project: Value added local processing of goat fibers by women and assessing the characteristics of naturally colored mohair and the potentials for its marketing”

Abstract

Tajikistan is the poorest of the Central Asian republics, with income per capita just $330. Tajik families and especially women are in need of development assistance to improve living standards. The ICARDA project “Community Action in Integrated and Market Oriented Feed-Livestock Production in Central and South Asia” works to improve livelihoods of rural families in the Sugd oblast through research on production and marketing of agricultural products and the development of new market chains that would link producers with urban markets. The project activity #16 “Value added local processing of goat fibers by women and assessing the characteristics of naturally colored mohair and the potentials for its marketing” is focused on establishing a market chain for mohair yarn which is one of the key export products produced by women in the pilot region. During the first project year research was conducted on the production and marketing of Tajik mohair and mohair yarn and a promising new market for kid mohair yarn in the United States was identified. In April 2007 ICARDA researchers worked with Tajik women to make yarn samples for the US market. The preliminary tests of the samples by American knitters confirmed that the Tajik artisans have the raw materials and skills to produce high quality, handspun yarns that could be sold in yarn stores in the United States. Selling luxury, kid mohair yarns in the United States as a Fair Trade product would allow the women to earn much higher incomes than by producing coarse yarns for the Russian market which is currently their main outlet. The project team continues to work on developing all the necessary components of the mohair yarn market chain with the objective of successfully linking the Tajik women spinners with American consumers. This report offers a summary of activities undertaken during the first project year.