Our Stories
After the August 2008 conflict with Russia, many Georgian families who had been forced from their homes are finding it difficult to restart their lives after they return. Unemployment is high, and they often don’t have the resources to buy the seeds, fertilizer, or tools with which to farm.
With funding from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, International Relief & Development (IRD) is working with more than 800 of these families, giving them the economic jumpstart they need to support themselves. IRD’s agricultural experts are helping vegetable farmers and dairy producers in villages around Georgia’s second city, Gori, to increase production, band together in producer organizations, and link with processors to distribute their products to domestic and export markets. IRD is also distributing tools and farming equipment to replace those lost or stolen during the conflict.
Vegetable farmers’ training started with the use of mini-greenhouses called polytunnels for the production of healthy seedlings and continues on into the individual garden plots with intensive, on-site training for raised bed planting, trellising, fertilizing, watering, pruning, and weed and disease control. The training and inputs will allow the families to produce three to six times their previous yield of vegetables.
IRD’s dairy value chain model will supply the dairy producers’ association with a collection vehicle; negotiate fixed unit price sales contracts between the processors and milk producers for daily sale of milk; and supply 100 milk producers with high-quality, high-yield cows to increase their production. IRD will also provide technical expertise to the cheese production facility to establish market connections and negotiate sales contracts in Gori.
In addition, the program also includes the emergency repair of Tbilisi-based collective centers housing those internally displaced people who fled Abkhazia in the early 1990s who have not yet received a durable housing solution through either the Government of Georgia or the international community. The majority of the repairs on the 10 collective centers were to the water and sewage systems and electricity, with a small number of facilities requiring improved bathroom facilities. Rehabilitation was finalized before the end of February 2010, and benefitted more than 250 families.