Of the four districts in Tavush Marz, Berd is the most remote. One could say the district is cut off; a no man’s land. Local villagers have a hard time selling their crops and dairy products in the large markets. It’s 62 kilometers from the town of Berd, the former administrative district center, to the present regional center of Ijevan, and 199 kilometers to Yerevan. The highway linking Yerevan with Berd is in pretty decent shape except for the pot-holed stretch through the village of Vazashen. Once you leave Berd, however, the 20-25 kilometer stretch of road linking outlying villages to the former district center is almost impassable. Villagers in these remote communities have no possibility of selling their agricultural goods in the capital, Yerevan. They simply cannot compete with the farmers in the Ararat valley, for whom the Yerevan markets are merely minutes away. Thus, what are sorely needed in the Berd area are centers to collect the locally grown crops. If such centers were built it would greatly reduce the unemployment now afflicting the border regions of Tavush and other marzes. Then too, the exodus of people from these sensitive border regions would also be slowed. With the assistance of CARD (Center for Rural and Agro-Business Development) a milk collection units were set up in the villages of Tavush, Varagavan, Navour and Nerkin Garmiraghbyur. A similar unit was launched in the village of Norashen. This unit was established in the framework of the Small Commercial Agricultural Development Program. Pavel Tsutsoulyan, who heads the program’s support team in Tavush, says that this milk collection unit was put into operation last year at the cost of 15 million AMD. The Norashen unit was envisaged to serve the communities of Norashen, Tchoratan and Verin Garmiraghbyur. It was established in collaboration with the firm Ashtarak Milk. The company supplied the unit with the necessary technical equipment. For the most part, all the units in the area supply Ashtarak Milk with the raw milk they’ve collected. On August 7, during a speech at a session of the Tavush Regional Council, Vahan Karapetyan, Director of the Tavush Regional Center for Agricultural Assistance, directed the attention of Tavush Regional Administrator Armen Ghularyan and regional community leaders to an issue of major concern – that the milk collection units in the Berd district have basically ceased to operate due to low milk prices. It turns out that villagers aren’t willing to sell their product at such ridiculously low prices. Pavel Tsutsoulyan says that Ashtarak Milk pays 80-85 AMD on average for one liter of milk produced in the Berd district. The company only buys milk at this price if the fat content meets its standard of 3.8%. For milk with a higher fat content, the company pays 90-95 AMD per liter. Hratzin Grigoryan, a Tavush village resident and agro-advisor to the Tavush Agricultural Assistance Center has an explanation for the local milk collection unit’s practices. He says that Ashtarak Milk imports inexpensive dried milk from overseas which it uses to produce its liquid milk, thus having no need to collect milk in Tavush. When demand exists, villagers can sell their milk at a higher price to fellow residents or turn the milk into fat or cheese. The number of those buying milk in the villages isn’t great, however, and the milk collection units built with credit or other means along the border areas are doomed to stand idle. On August 12, Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan met with editors of regional papers in the Government Building. Taking advantage of the opportunity we asked PM Sargsyan to speak about the low prices paid by Ashtarak Milk and the fact that the collection units are going idle. “The milk issue is of major concern today. One of the theories making the rounds is that milk prices have dropped because fried milk powder is being imported in great quantities to Armenia. During the first six months of this year, twice as much dried milk has been imported to Armenia than last year. Naturally, many plants prefer to use the powered milk since it’s cheaper. Now we have decided to keep the same customs value on powdered milk as last year. This can only have a positive impact on the conditions faced by our domestic milk producers. I hope that we can feel the effects of this decision in the next few months,” answered PM Sargsyan. When we asked Tatevik Ghabazyan, Ashtarak Milk’s Public Relations Director, why the company was paying such low prices for milk produced in the Berd district and whether it was due to the cheap milk powder being imported, she answered that the company has never imported milk or milk powder from overseas. Ashtarak Milk has its own plant to produce milk powder. During the summer, some of the fresh milk is made into powder. Director Ghabazyan assured us that prices paid at the collection units were based on market conditions. Director Ghabazyan also informed us that on average the company sells every liter of milk it produces for 300-350 AMD. After being reprocessed, milk can be sold at 4x the price. But isn’t it true that the by-products of reprocessing, such as whey, which is a good way to fatten pigs, also has a certain price and can bring in supplemental revenue to the reprocessing plants? Presently, a half liter of regular spring water is sold in stores for about 100 AMD. In bigger plastic containers, a half liter of non-carbonated spring water sells for 120 AMD. The container itself has a cost attached to it, which includes the wages paid to workers, production costs and taxes. If we deduct these costs from the price it turns out that regular spring water isn’t cheaper than the milk being collected. At the above mentioned Tavush Regional Council session, Regional Administrator Armen Ghularyan promised that he’d meet with the executive director of Ashtarak Milk in the near future and that they’d discuss the issue of low milk prices in the district.