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SummaryIndigenous goats of Central Asia and Afghanistan produce cashmere, the warm undercoat grown annually to protect them from cold winters. Cashmere is appreciated in luxury markets, but there are no efforts to conserve these goats. Commercial assessments of their fibre quality have recently been undertaken. Poorer villagers in the most climatically difficult remote desert and high altitude regions are particularly dependent on raising goats. Villagers in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan started selling raw cashmere mainly to Chinese traders in the 1990s. Afghan producers have been selling cashmere for a longer time. In comparison with China and Mongolia, Central Asian and Afghan producers sell their cashmere unsorted and at relatively low prices. Traders do not offer producers differentiated prices according to quality, but world commercial prices are highly sensitive to quality. Producers thus lose potential value. Summaries are given of tests on the quality of cashmere from samples of 1 592 goats in 67 districts and 221 villages from 2003 to 2008. There are cashmere goats in these sampled districts which produce the finest qualities of cashmere typical of Chinese and Mongolian cashmere. There is impetus to increase the production, commercial value and income for producers from cashmere produced by Central Asian goats.

This article proposes a methodology for substantiating an optimal location of oil storage facilities in agricultural and industrial companies, for estimating a consumption of fuel and greases, a placement of reserves and their operational distribution in the company. This approach allows reducing costs on providing consumers with petroleum products and saving fuel and oil when operating motor vehicles and tractors.

This paper presents a methodology for estimating an optimal zone of motor vehicle and tractor maintenance as well as an approach to calculate total discounted costs for maintenance and troubleshooting of motor vehicles and tractors in a production department. The proposed methodology allows substantiating an appropriate use of company motor vehicles and tractors for implementing mechanized operations in crop farming.