The meeting was attended by Dr. Harry Smith, Consultant in the field of agriculture and rural investment development, planning and management; Dr. Alisher Tashmatov, Executive Secretary of ASNIOCAC, Dr. Kamiljon Akramov, Research Fellow of the Development Strategy of the Management Department at IFPRI, Dr. Abdurazak Khuzhakulov, National Consultant of IFAD and Rustam Ibragimov, Assistant Executive Secretary of ASNIOCAC.

The main purpose of the meeting is the potential cooperation for the program of development of agricultural innovations in Uzbekistan.

Dr. Harry Smith offered to support the development of agricultural innovations in Uzbekistan. Specifically, IFAD focuses on analyzing the dairy and meat cost chain for farmers in order to enhance the full range of activities required to bring a product (e.g., animals, meat, milk, eggs, leather, fiber, manure) to end-users, going through various phases of production, processing, and delivery. It can also be defined as market cooperation between different stakeholders that produce high-value-added products in the market.

In addition, cost chain analysis is important for understanding markets, their relationships, the participation of different actors, and the critical constraints that limit the growth of livestock production and, consequently, the competitiveness of small farmers. These farmers currently receive only a small fraction of the final cost of their production, even if in theory, risk and reward should be shared down the chain. Market access and the distribution of risks and benefits across the different steps of the value agricultural chains also varies according to the gender of producers (e.g. rights to income derived from cattle); Processes (access to processing technologies and information); market agents (access to transportation of safe market spaces and overnight accommodation) and according to economies of scale ( women unite to improve their market position)

In this regard, the participants of the meeting (IFAD, IFPRI, ASNIOCAC) agreed to join forces for the next step (conducting a study) in Uzbekistan. According to Dr. Harry Smith and Dr. Abdurazak Khuzhakulov, " the analysis of the cost chain of dairy and meat products is an important aspect of agricultural innovation and visits to farms showed that the analysis needs to be carried out in the country"