FOOD AID IN AFGHANISTAN

Geoff Q-B is in Kabul working as a senior advisor to the 'AVIPA Plus Program' being run by International Relief & Development (IRD) for USAID. "AVIPA Plus" stands for Afghanistan Vouchers for Increased Productive Agriculture" and more information can be found on it on the IRD web site at http://www.ird.org.

Briefly, however, the project has distributed vouchers for certified wheat seed and fertilizer (Urea and DAP) to subsistence farmers throughout the growing area. 47,000 hectares of land (irrigated and rain fed) have been covered with substantial yield increases. Jobs have been created and improvements made in the value chain.

The challenge now is to extend the project into other areas and other sub-sectors of agriculture.

WHEAT-FLOUR INDUSTRY IN PAKISTAN

2008 has seen an enormous crisis in the wheat grain grain and flour industry in Pakistan. Geoff QB along with colleagues Sadia Sarwar and Zain Asadullah Kazmi prepared a comprehensive analysis of wheat policy, prices, supply and demand in order to cast light on what caused the crisis (government mismanagement) and what could be done to avoid the situation in future (among other things restructure the GOP official procurement system). The Discussion Paper, issued by the Competitiveness Support Fund in Islamabad is available at the following link in ,pdf format:

http://www.competitiveness.org.pk/articles.php?p=1

TA 4217 TEAM IN QUYI CHIRCHIK

Our TA team recently visited the Regional Business Advisory Centre in Quyi Chirchik district about 50 km from Tashkent and provided training in IT, accounts and access to legal services. We also conducted an appraisal of a 30 hectare demonstration farm that is based on zero-till cultivation previously not used in Uzbekistan. This is part of the on-going assistance being provided by the ADB's Grains Productivity Improvement Project that includes reform of the grains sector.

Our project office in Tashkent

Our project is with ANZDEC of New Zealand and UBI Consulting for the Asian Development Bank (TA No. 4217-UZB). In 2000-01 Bastin helped design a $40 million loan project for the grains industry focused on wheat productivity improvement. His current work in 2006 is a Technical Assistance project to continue the furthering of reforms in the sector with a special focus on farm machinery and seeds. From a base in Tashkent the TA works in three focus areas up-country. The work program runs to December 2006. Bastin is the Team Leader managing a group of international and local specialists.

Wheat harvesting near Zomin, Djizzak, Uzbekistan

Our ADB Technical Assistance project has evaluated the financing, procurement and operation of 49 "Dominator 130"-type combine harvesters (manufactured by the CLAAS company of Germany) in three focus areas in central Uzbekistan. The evaluation included financing methods, ownership structures, the logistics of the harvest, technical operation of the harvesters themselves and the financial impact on those farmers and service enterprises borrowing to purchase the machines.