 Florence Hodous paints a dismal picture of the state of agriculture in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan where thousands of farmers and peasants continue to lack necessary technology and financial resources and suffer from poor policy-making and destructive government interference.
More than half the populations of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Thereby agricultural development and advancement is paramount for Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to function.
In Uzbekistan, the state is not willing to abandon its tight control over the farming infrastructure. While a small number of small-scale independent farms have established themselves in the past decade, these farms have not been able to compete with the collective farm sector. The Uzbek collective farm system has changed little since the Soviet times. They produce cotton and grain, more of the latter since the end of the Soviet period, and are required to sell it to the state at mostly fixed prices. Collective farms have extremely high productivity due to high labour input from the collective's registered workers. Only registered workers may work on the collective farm's plots, which are divided by household.
Many of the Soviet era managers of the Uzbek collective farms continue to manage them today. The managers' relationship to the state and style of leadership has not markedly changed. What has changed for these managers are two new challenges: indebtedness of the farms and lack of resources to pay the farmers. In Soviet times, the farmers were paid relatively adequately for their work. Now, the farmers' wages sometimes come in the form of bad quality or out-of-date food, or not at all. "Kolkhozchik" is now synonymous with "poor" in Uzbekistan and as evidence of growing poverty; many farmers have to sell household goods. Some farmers look for other means of livelihood, including migrating seasonally to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan to pick cotton, or smuggling cotton (even in Turkmenistan, where local official are also keen to fulfil government quotas, it fetches higher prices than in Uzbekistan). Even with the supplementary income, many Uzbek farmers stay on the collective farms because of the difficulties in finding land to start an independent farm upon and the challenge of uprooting one's family.
Kyrgyzstan, meanwhile, took an early interest in privatizing land and established a program granting land to every rural resident in 1994 and in 1998, after considerable parliamentary debate, complete ownership of the plots was handed to the individual. Thereby, the agricultural situation is quite different. Under the privatized system, Kyrgyz farmers face difficulties at all stages of production. Fertilizer is rarely available due to the removal of subsidies and the cost of transport; machinery often belongs to a few people, and is unsuitable for small-scale agriculture. Transporting crops is also difficult as gasoline is expensive and most people do not own vehicles. Many farmers must sell their crops at a low price to a middleman who transports the crops to the processing plants for the independent farmers. Additionally, there are few opportunities for farmers to obtain credit. Small loans programmes are not profitable for Kyrgyz banks and the few loan programmes that do exist have short repayment plans that are difficult for farmers, with two and three year profit cycles, to meet. Most small farmers, therefore, build start-up capital by selling cattle or through personal loans from relatives and friends. Finally, due to the high population to land ratio, many families can only afford a plot too small to reap a profit, forcing many farmers to form new cooperatives often with relatives. A common sight, especially in southern Kyrgyzstan, is families tending their pegged out rows of crops on multi-family farms.
In Kyrgyzstan, the former collective farm managers do not have the political clout that they once enjoyed, but for many their political power has transformed into economic power. When the land was privatized these managers were able to appropriate the best land, machinery, and vehicles to themselves so that now they tend to be among the wealthier farmers. Similar situations occurred with other agricultural professionals: farm accountants, agronomists, veterinarians, and breeding specialists were those that took most advantage of the initial, very favourable conditions for setting up private farms after 1991.
Kyrgyz agriculture, despite a relatively egalitarian privatization, therefore is not prospering. In order for the situation to improve complementary conditions are crucial: functioning input and output markets, affordable transportation, being among the most important. Agriculture is not without prospects, on the contrary, but until these problems can be solved, it will be difficult for farmers to prosper.
It is imperative for Kyrgyzstan to develop its agricultural base so that the profits can develop industry. If land is fairly equally distributed, agriculture can provide one of the best bases for growing prosperity without huge social differentiation, and rising incomes in agriculture will lead to broad-based demand that will stimulate industry. For a landlocked country for which it is difficult or expensive to export, these arguments are particularly important.
The ideology of the world's main lending institutions is unlikely to help Kyrgyzstan's agriculture develop; Kyrgyzstan should solve the existing problems with state involvement if necessary. What international pressure may help with; however is to bring about change in Uzbekistan where change in agriculture is not likely to occur unless there is also change in the government's attitude toward privatization. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
