DUSHANBE, January 29, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Farmers in Tajikistan’s poorest region will receive a $12 million boost from the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to help curb poverty, boost incomes and improve the lives of farmers in 250 villages, press release issued by the UN News Center on January 27 said.

The initiative will target the Khatlon province, where more than two-thirds of the rural population is poor.

Low productivity is common among Khatlon’s farmers due to land degradation, limited credit, lack of irrigation facilities and poor access to technology and markets.

The Khatlon Livelihoods Support Project – expected to benefit nearly 20,000 households, with at least half the beneficiaries being women – seeks to organize farmers and provide them with improved technologies and finance infrastructure schemes.

In the past three decades, IFAD has invested over $10 billion to help more than 350 million rural poor people boost their incomes and provide for their families. Today, the agency supports nearly 250 programs and projects in almost 90 developing nation