CGIAR Central Asia and the Caucasus

Problems the Region is Facing

The food and agricultural sectors of the CAC Republics represent both a promise and a challenge for the future. There is huge potential for improving the agricultural productivity (and specifically the water productivity) to meet national market demands and generate income through introducing high-value crops and emerging export opportunities. Agricultural trade has emerged as a key earner of foreign exchange and its potential for further growth is high.

Under the Soviet agricultural production system, the large-scale collective and state farms controlled some 95% of agricultural land and produced the bulk of the commercially marketed output. Product markets and input supply channels were also largely controlled by state organizations. Commercial production from state enterprises was supplemented by household plots that relied on part-time family labor and produced mainly for subsistence or local farmers' markets. These household plots achieved relatively high levels of productivity, producing 20% of gross agricultural outputs from 2% of the land.

Soil degradation is a wide-spread problem.

Following independence, the large state farms not only inherited the problems already manifest in the high-input, energy intensive agricultural production methods of the Soviet system, but also gained new ones from the transformation process. Intensive irrigation and poorly managed drainage systems have resulted in waterlogging and salinisation of soils, and due to lack of financial resources, the former state-operated irrigation systems are deteriorated. Both the area harvested and yields have declined, with large areas of arable land, especially in Kazakhstan being left fallow. After independence, sale of livestock was the only source of income for the farmers, which resulted in huge reductions in the aggregate herd size. Also, in some of the CAC countries, the collapse of the Soviet production system was not compensated for with regard to subsidies, adequate infrastructure and inputs, information support, and market opportunities.