On May 30th 2018 Mr. Johannes Stenbaek Madsen, Head of the Cooperation Section of the EU Delegation to the Republic of Kazakhstan visited “Sahabatly” Dairy Enterprise.
He was accompanied by Ms. Silvia Pietropaolo, Programme Manager for Turkmenistan, Ms. Simona Mussolino Deputy Head of Finance and Contract Section and Ms. Zora Gonczarow Programme Manager Finance and Contract Section.
The “Sahabatly” Dairy enterprise is located 10-15 km North-West of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
The enterprise was established in June 2014 and is partly funded by the state soft credit scheme (33%). Its owner and the manager is Mr Orazgeldi Anzarov, started dairy farming in 1997 by leasing an old unprofitable Soviet dairy farm. Since then, Mr Anzarov has become one of the most successful and advanced dairy farmers in Turkmenistan.
Currently “Sahabatly” Dairy farm has 580 cows and 410 of them are milking at the moment, with an average milk yield per cow of 5,000 litres. Daily milk production is about 8 tons, with additional plans to be increased to 10 tons per day.
In addition to cows, the farm has circa 1000 white Alpine goats (also producing milk for goat milk and goat cheese). Enterprise produces about 15 different dairy products, including smetana, kefir, ayran, suzme (soft cheese), whole milk, goat milk, goat cheese
The farm has access to long term leased (99 years) 458 ha good quality arable land on which it grows lucerne, maize and barley for producing its own feed for the milk herd. Last year, the farm successfully grew a trial 5 ha plot of soya beans. This year the farm is growing 100 ha of soya bean for use as animal feed. This will help improve the protein content and nutrition of the Sahabatly dairy herd. In turn, this will help increase milk per cow output. The land lease has now been extended for use for unlimited period of time. The enterprise has applied for additional 200 ha of arable land to expand its crop for feed production. This application is under the consideration of the relevant authorities. The farm expects a positive outcome by the end of this year.
The farm visit was also accompanied by Mr. Arthur Russell, Team Leader of the EU funded project “Support for Further Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development in Turkmenistan – Phase III”. Given the fact that there are 10-12 similar dairy units like “Sahabatly” across the country, Mr. Madsen and the project team voiced confidence in a number of follow up visits to these enterprises in order to establish possible ways of technical support and cooperation, which proves to be bringing positive results to the country’s agricultural sector.
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