CGIAR Central Asia and the Caucasus

Challenges the Region is Facing

The breakup of the Soviet Union brought many challenges for the countries of CAC. Some of them are:

1. Maintaining Food Security

• Food security has become a high priority of all the countries in the region;
• The food output fell by almost 50% between 1991 and 1999. Fortunately, since then, some countries fully recovered and exceeded pre-independence food output levels. However, it still remains lower than pre-independence levels in some of the CAC countries
• The partly rapidly increasing population (except for Kazakhstan) has decreased the per capita food consumption by 15 - 45%
• Future food needs are to be met locally for additional population in both rural and urban areas.

2. Rising the Living Standards

• 16- 33% of the population currently live below the poverty line of 2 USD per day
• 30-50% of poor people live in rural areas; thus, farming is the primary option for their upliftment
• The gap between rich urban elites and the rural poor is widening quickly
• The need for drinking water and sanitation will increase.

3. Protecting the Environment

• Degradation of crop, range and mountain areas: the vast rangelands that could be used as potential carbon sink are under serious threat of degradation and this has future global implications in terms of climate change
• Water misuse and scarcity: 80% of annually available water presently goes for crop farming where it is used in a highly inefficient manner
• Degradation of fruits and other natural landscapes is common
• Mal-practiced irrigation that leads to elevated groundwater tables, waterlogging of crops, and increases secondary soil salinity degrades the soils and threatens the land's productivity.

4. Linking Markets and Trade

• Re-establishment and structural improvement improvement of regional trade and market channels
• Supply of inputs for agricultural production and credit for small farmers needs to be improved
• Marketing of agricultural production to become a real incentive for producers
• Lack of smallholder market association or cooperatives
• Lack of storage facilities, processing industries, market-chains and transportation systems.

5. Achieving Structural Reforms:

• Emergence of many new types of farms
• Effective extension, training and farmer advisory systems for inexperienced former state farm employees that have become farmers after independence need to be put in place
• Irrigation systems remain in operation under centralized and often inadequate management: water distribution among small private farms is a major challenge
• Land tenure, access and property rights as well as environmental laws undeveloped and sometimes contradicting; re-enforcement is not in place.

6. Strengthening National Agricultural Research Systems

• Too many poorly equipped and insufficiently funded research institutions
• Too narrowly sectoral views prevail; interdependencies of the complex human-natural system are not addressed
• Lack of young qualified staff due to significant exodus of researchers and lack of stimuli for attracting young generation to science
• Lack of contacts with the international scientific community, due to communication and language barriers as well as differing scientific approaches
• Breakdown of national/transnational coordination mechanisms among the scientists / institutions in the region
• Traditional emphasis on top-down approaches to science and development, participatory approaches underdeveloped
• Undeveloped links between researchers and producers.