🇹🇯 The cattle breeds of Tajikistan

Cattle come second after chickens among Tajikistan's farm animals, kept almost entirely on small household plots rather than big farms. Beef and cow's milk, with cheese, count among the country's main animal products in a land where grassland takes up most of the farming area. Winter fodder shortages and weak pasture management remain the chief difficulties for small herders.

• Household plots hold 89% of Tajikistan's cattle and 94% of its cows
• Cattle rank second among the country's farm animals, after chickens
• Pastures and hay meadows cover 76% of the agricultural land
• Beef, mutton and poultry are the main meats; cow's milk tops the dairy list
• Farm output fell by more than half after independence, then doubled from its 1997 low

Cattle in Tajikistan

Tajikistan is an intensely rural country, with more than seven people in ten living in the countryside and farming employing about six workers in ten. Cattle rank second among its farm animals, after chickens and ahead of sheep, goats and horses. Keeping is a smallholder affair: nearly nine cattle in ten and almost every dairy cow belong to household plots, with peasant dehkan farms and large enterprises left from Soviet times holding the rest. Pastures and hay meadows cover about three-quarters of the agricultural land, so herds share the countryside with the cotton and wheat of the irrigated valleys. Winter feed shortage, weak pasture management and limited technical knowledge among small keepers are the main obstacles to livestock development.

Milk, butter and beef

Beef ranks with mutton and poultry as one of Tajikistan's most important meats. Cow's milk leads the dairy side, joined by goat's milk and cheese, while wool rounds out the main animal goods of the farm economy. Because household plots supplied nine-tenths of the value of livestock output in the mid-2000s, much of this beef and milk comes from family cows rather than large commercial herds. The same smallholders also tend chickens, sheep, goats and horses, so beef and milk come from mixed farmyards rather than specialist herds.

Today

The livestock sector mirrors the wider farm economy: after agriculture collapsed in the 1990s, losing more than half its output by 1997, production has climbed back towards its former level. Household plots remain the backbone of cattle keeping, holding 89% of animals. Development agencies point to poor pasture governance, winter feed shortages, environmental degradation and gaps in smallholders' skills as the barriers to progress, and reform of farming since independence has aimed to lift rural incomes in one of the region's poorest countries.