Dusheti: Donations help farmers combat poverty

Zviad Patarashvili is from Bulachauri, a Dushetian village in the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region that lies 54 km northeast of Georgia’s capital city Tbilisi. Like other locals, his family struggles financially to survive. The family lives below the poverty line. Their only income is 180 GEL a month that they receive in aid from the Georgian Government.

To feed his six young children, 40-year-old Patarashvili has a small plot of land where he grows produce and later sells to support his household.

As part of the New Economic Opportunities Initiative (NEO), funded by USAID and implemented by Civil Development Agency (CiDA), a local donor organisation presented Patarashvili with a business plan and offered him expert knowledge, skills and equipment, including a tractor, to allow him to better cultivate and harvest his crop.

 Zviad Patarashvili with his tractor. Photo by agenda.ge

"Only using hands and without new technologies it is impossible in modern time to plough the two, three or more hectare plots of land and produce high quality products that you manage to sell at the market,” Patarashvili explained to journalists who visited the CiDA project in the region.

"Fortunately CiDA provided me with a tractor. Now I plough and cultivate not only my plots of land but my neighbours ones too. This tractor has made my rural life easier,” the farmer said.

Gia Gurashvili is one of Patarashvili’s few neighbours who, with the help of the CiDA tractor – as Bulachauri’s villagers call it, are able to use the tractor to get their land and crops in the best possible shape.

Gurashvili received 15,000 GEL from CIDA to establish a greenhouse and install a modern water irrigation system for a 2,000 sqm tomato orchard.

 Gia Gurashvili in his orchard in Bulachauri, a Dushetian village in the Mtskheta-Mtianeti region. Photo by agenda.ge 

"I planted 30,000 tomato plants and expect to harvest nearly 5 kg of tomato from each plant. Half of the products I have already [harvested] and sold them in Tbilisi’s markets. The demand is very high at the markets but tomatoes must be of a high quality,” Gurashvili said.

According to latest Census data, the Dusheti district has a total of 33,800 inhabitants spread over 17 community councils covering 288 villages, which are primarily located in mountainous areas. Locals said only 15 percent of the agricultural land in Bulachauri, of which had a total area of 107 hectares, was cultivated.

They believed people moved from Bulachauri because they experienced an extremely high level of vulnerability due to food insecurity.

"People have no knowledge how to test new crop varieties and technologies. They do not have enough money to even buy plants. The region’s depth of poverty is high. CiDA’s assistance was like air for breathing,” Gurashvili said. 

A 22 month project, funded by USAID and implemented by CiDA, kicked off in the autumn of 2012. The overall budget of the project was one million GEL.

CiDA Local Government liaison Revan Barbakadze believed this initiative had proven to increase household income by an average of 15 percent.

Manana Melikishvili, 57, came from Dmanisi to Bulachauri to work in Gia Gurashvili's orchard. Her daily salary is 20 GEL.

"Overall CIDA has supported more than 400 vulnerable households. More importantly, when other locals see the benefits of starting small business either in agriculture or service sectors they understand that it really works,” Barbakadze said.

As part of the project many small businesses had been established including six family hostels, three beauty salons, four small mixed shops, one mill, one printing house, four confectioneries, a cafe, a goldsmith, a pharmacy and many more.

Zurab Davituri who lived in the neighbouring village of Sakramuli also received eight beehives from CiDA.

"This season I have already gathered 90 kg of honey and the market price per kilogram of honey is 15 GEL. By the help of CiDA we even tested it in a laboratory and it was the highest quality,” Davituri said.

He expected to sell his honey and use his earnings to buy more beehives.

Zurab Davituri is preparing the gathered honey for sale. Photo by agenda.ge

Another person to benefit from the scheme was Ramaz Maisuradze. He was internally displaced from Kurta village in Georgia’s breakaway Tskhinvali region after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Now, he stood proudly in the aisle of his small greenhouse, which blossomed in green. He explained with pride that with the help of CiDA he established this greenhouse and with his farming activities, cucumbers would soon be ready to harvest.

Maisuradze and his family of seven live in an internally displaced persons (IDPs) settlement near Bazaleti Lake in the Dusheti region. He does not own the plot of land where the greenhouse was established.

 Ramaz Maisuradze in his small cucumber greenhouse. Photo by agenda.ge

"This territory was covered with bushes and it could be said that it was uninhabited. The Government promised to offer us lands that sit nearby our IDP settlement but the project has not been implemented yet,” Maisuradze said.

Maisuradze believed the greenhouse business was very profitable and his neighbours were interested in his greenhouse business venture.