Success Story: Building Resilience of Agricultural Businesses

Shahnoza, LLC is a small-scale agri-enterprise based in Jayhun district in southwest Tajikistan. The company was started by Abdugaffor Kurbonov in 1999 and, over time, has diversified its agricultural activities from lemon production and a range of homeproduced value-added products to introducing strawberry production for the first time in 2017. With his wife and four children, Abdugaffor worked hard to enlarge his production area to three hectares, but faced challenges with marketing the produce, in particular the strawberries, as both he and his hired labor lacked the skills to sort, grade, and pack the strawberries to meet the requirements of higher-value markets.