CGIAR Central Asia and the Caucasus

Agriculture in the Region

The region covers an enormous area - 410 million hectares, of which about 70% is classified as agricultural land – most of it rangeland in the semi-arid and arid vastness of the region (about 256 million hectares are classified as rangelands). Only 8% of the land is arable; of which 39% are irrigated. Wheat, cotton, and livestock are the important agricultural commodities. The environment of these “winter-cold deserts” is characterized by extremely low and variable rainfall and wide temperature extremes between e.g. -40°C in the short winters and +40°C in the summers. The landscape is a mixture of mountains, deserts, and steppes.

The livelihoods of a majority of people depend on agriculture. Agriculture contributes up to 7-34% of GDP and employs up to 32% of population in the CAC countries. Thus, agriculture is of paramount importance in the region as a whole. In spite of the large agricultural potential of the region, agricultural productivity and profitability are low due to the fact that arable land resources have been under serious pressure by over-grazing, extension of cropped area, loss of soil fertility, organic matter and by secondary salinization and waterlogging in irrigated areas.

Crop production is variable between years and generally below that of other regions of the world with similar agro-ecologies.

Grain production has become a priority for food security in the region.

The transition to independence has also had considerable impact on agricultural research and rural development. Most of CAC’s national agricultural research systems are presently meagerly funded and, therefore, can benefit from each other for exchange of information and dissemination of agricultural technologies. It is worth mentioning here that all these countries have inherited a wealth of research experience from the Soviet Union which provided these republics fairly good foundation to build-on collaborative agricultural research. The countries of CAC have a rich experience of cotton/cereal-based integrated livestock farming production systems practiced in irrigated and rainfed environments of the plains and the highlands/mountain regions.

Nature protection philosophy recognizes the fact that water in dry areas determines the landscape, life, biodiversity and sustainability of the fragile natural resources. Basic components of the problem-solving technologies necessarily need to be site specific but must be based on the general principles that need to be developed to extend them efficiently across all production conditions. Solutions to some of complex natural resource management problems have trans-boundary domains as for example hydro-salinity and climate change. This suggests that such problems could be better addressed by joint regional actions.