Farmer First: How Your Ag Business Investment Supports People in Recovery

Pictured: Left is the wife from the duo managing the rehab center, on the right is Jengish, our interpreter and leader of Dutch Nature Impact, who provided poultry farming to the center.

When we talk about investing in agricultural businesses in Central Asia, the benefits are often clear and quantifiable: jobs created, income earned, businesses strengthened, and more food produced locally.

Those things are critically important, but sometimes the impact on human lives reaches well beyond the standard impact metrics.

On a recent visit to a rehabilitation center in Kyrgyzstan, we witnessed one of those unexpected connections first-hand.

The center opened six years ago to serve men recovering from various addictions. The care facility can house up to 20 residents and is home eight men as of this writing. The program lasts one year and is openly Christian and faith-based.

The center’s story is closely tied to the couple who now run it.

In 2019, a local pastor started the center. The husband-wife duo managing it today were among the first people to enter the rehabilitation as the husband himself was in recovery.

“When my husband was rehabilitated and finished the program, the pastor asked him to become the director here since he had experienced rehab firsthand.”

Today, he helps other men walk a road he knows personally.

The center is also remarkably self-reliant. It receives only about $100 per month in charitable support from a local church. The other operational costs are covered via the contract labor work of the people who live and serve there.

That work takes several forms: the husband leads residents in manual labor projects in the surrounding community, while his wife oversees gardening and poultry farming at the center.

Pictured: A local man from the rehab center welcomes the Summit attendees during our tour.

Even the physical property reflects that approach.

“My husband and the residents build everything here. We do everything in-house, only receiving $100 per month in support from a local church. That money is helpful but not enough, so we raise chickens with help from Oasis Agro/Dutch Nature Impact to gain more income to support ourselves.”

As many of you are invested into the Dutch Nature ecosystem, this is where we tie into the rehab center. Dutch Nature Impact (DNI) is a nonprofit wing of the network using profits to help start up sustainable ag projects where they’re needed most.

Through our agricultural partners, poultry farming has become a key way to help places like this rehab center generate income. Chickens may seem like a small part of a much larger story of addiction and recovery, but that’s what makes this project worth notice.

Investment in agriculture rarely stops at agriculture.

When agricultural businesses in Central Asia gain access to the resources they need to grow, the obvious results are important: more employment, stronger household incomes, greater local food production and increased food security.

But healthy businesses also become part of the infrastructure of healthy communities.

They develop knowledge that can be shared. They create supply chains that other small enterprises can participate in. They provide productive work. And sometimes, as at this rehabilitation center, they help create an income stream that allows an organization serving vulnerable people to become more sustainable.

Pictured: the chicken coop built by the center’s management and participants.

Here, poultry farming isn't simply about producing eggs or raising chickens, it’s one part of creating a place where men in recovery can live, work, and rebuild.

There are no guarantees in that process. The people running the center are candid about the difficulty of addiction recovery. Of approximately 50 people who’ve entered the program, about half have left before completing the full year.

They don’t force people to stay, and they celebrate their graduates.

Pictured: the rehab center’s garden, including natural pest control and a wide range of produce.

A thriving agricultural enterprise can provide a job. A job can provide income. Local production can strengthen food security. But the ripple effects can travel further. This is just one example of your agricultural investment going above and beyond, helping poultry expertise and resources reach a small rehab center.

That is why we celebrate seeing investment flow into so many reliable ag businesses across Central Asia.