armradio.am, Anahit Svaryan
In Shaghat, a borderline village in Syunik Region, residents last heard gunfire about a month ago. Anna, a mother of four and a resident of the village, told “Radiolur” that although she loves her village very much, she would move to the capital or a more convenient place if she had the opportunity. What worries her more than security issues are social problems.
“We keep a lot of livestock, but since milk has no price and hay is expensive, we can’t manage — we are forced to sell. We personally keep many animals, but now everyone who used to have ten cows keeps no more than one. Taxes have been imposed on the fields and even on the cows — how can people keep them?”
Anna’s husband used to be a butcher, but after the government’s decision regarding slaughterhouses, he was left without a job and now works in animal husbandry.
Shaghat Administrative Head, Tigran Khachatryan, says that in 2015 an agricultural cooperative was established:
“Our cooperative has production facilities. We tried wild harvesting through ‘LILA’ project.”
“LILA” project equipped Shaghat’s agricultural cooperative with a drying facility and supported the packaging and branding of its products. According to the administrative head, despite these new investments, emigration from the village is on the rise, which is due not so much to its border location, but rather to the weak development of livestock farming and crop cultivation in the community.
June 20, 2025 at 14:15