Georgia: Farmers Freed From Criminals' Stranglehold

Farmers growing Georgia’s lucrative hazelnut crop are looking forward to their first season without the threat of violence or extortion from criminal gangs.

Some 90 per cent of the hazelnut crop - a crucial export money-earner which provides the only employment in many rural areas - is grown in and around the Georgian-Abkhaz buffer area.

The harvesting and sale of the crop, however, has in the past proved problematic because of the presence of armed Georgian gangs in the region.

But in February 2004, Georgian security forces raided the Zugdidi and Tsalenjikh districts near the border, arresting some 35 militants. Another 150 disarmed voluntarily and an enormous cache of weapons was seized.

The country’s president Mikhail Saakashvili last month said farmers were now reaping the benefits, “Hazelnut farming is the only source of income for farmers in the districts of Zugdidi and Gali, but for many years this business was controlled by unidentified armed formations.

“Now that the guerrillas are gone, hundreds of new jobs are available in [the area].”

Georgian guerrilla groups operated here covertly ever since the Georgian-Abkhaz hostilities ended, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed in 1994.

Their stated objective was to seize back breakaway Abkhazia, which had unilaterally declared its independence in the early Nineties. But they acquired a reputation as bandits - controlling contraband shipments and all local businesses, including hazelnut farming.

Many Gali Georgians that fled during the war have returned to their abandoned homes in Abkhaz-held territory to harvest hazelnuts every season, risking their lives each time.

“Neither Georgian nor Abkhaz law applies in those Georgian villages that are now in Abkhazia,” a resident of Gagidi in the Gali area told IWPR.

As a result, for years local farmers had no choice but to sell their crop to dealers controlled by criminal gangs.

“There was no other way to start a hazelnut business in Zugdidi than to deal with those people,” said one trader, who owns several hazelnut-stocking centres.

“They controlled the entire chain; they helped ship the nuts safely from Abkhaz villages, made the locals sell their harvest to the ‘right’ dealers, regulated the prices, and managed exports.”

Now they have been driven out of the area, prices are rising.

“I’ve never been offered more than 1.5 lari (around 80 US cents) for my hazelnuts, so when my neighbour told me it’s now more than three dollars, I thought he was kidding me,” Koki Kutalia, a farmer from the village of Otobaya, told IWPR.

“We thought prices might climb a bit when the gangsters are gone, but no one expected a climb this steep. And now I am free to sell my hazelnuts to whoever offers more money.”

Previously, a hazelnut plantation earned the farmer between 1,500 to 3,000 dollars annually. Now the bigger farms stand to earn ten times as much.

More jobs have been created with the expansion in the number of hazelnut-stocking centres and wages are set to rise at a number of factories which shell hazelnuts for export.

“We used to make around 40 dollars a week,” said worker Liya Lataria, employed at one of the factories. “This year, I expect to earn more than double that.”

However, despite the recent crackdown, the hazelnut industry is not yet free of crime. Late last year, farmer Valter Mikai was killed and his wife tortured in the village of Kakhati by a gang.

“We are committed to making things better,” said Gigi Ugulava, the president’s envoy in the Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti region. “We have established more police posts in the villages along the Inguri [which separates Abkhaz-held territory from the rest of Georgia], and the area is patrolled every night. We hope this will work.”

The hazelnut industry is now beginning to attract foreign investors, with a Greek-built processing factory expected to be opened later in the year.

The farmers are now working hard to maximise their harvest, and are planting hazelnuts on all available land.

“I own about a hectare of land in my village, and I always grew corn there,” said Levter Bigvava from Orsantia.

“From now on, I’m going to grow only hazelnuts, as I can buy any amount of corn with the profit I will make.”

Irakly Lagvilava is a reporter for the Odishi TV channel in Zugdidi.