Bilateral meeting with H.E. Qurbon Hakimzoda, Minister for Agriculture of Tajikistan

Tashkent - FAO Director-General, QU Dongyu, met with His Excellency Qurbon Hakimzoda, Minister for Agriculture of the Republic of Tajikistan, in Tashkent at the sidelines of the LLDC Forum on Food Security and SDGs, hosted by Uzbekistan, to discuss collaboration in priority areas of work.

The Director-General expressed gratitude to the Minister for the ongoing collaboration between FAO and the Government of Tajikistan, and stressed the importance of working together to achieve collective goals, especially in the agricultural sector and for the implementation of innovative projects in support of agrifood systems transformation.

The Minister stressed the timeliness of the LLDC forum, not only for Tajikistan but the whole Central Asia region due to common challenges faced by the region. The Minister also thanked FAO for the support given to farmers in areas such as plant protection and plant quarantine, and locust protection programmes among others. In this regard, he requested FAO’s support for the third phase of the locust protection programme as the locust posed a significant threat to the country’s agrifood system.

Both sides discussed challenges and food insecurity in the mountainous areas of Tajikistan where there was a strong dependency on Yaks breeding, and agreed to continue their joint efforts to improve the livelihoods of the local populations.

Minister put a particular emphasis on the protection of the glaciers as 60 percent of water consumption of Central Asian countries was formed in these mountains, and in this regard referred to the upcoming international forum to be held in Tajikistan on the climate change issues leading to the loss of glaciers in the long term.