Agriculture in a Sorry State

Ten years after Tajikistan embarked on reforms to place collective farms in private hands, farmers are still in serious difficulties. NBCentralAsia agriculture experts say the sector urgently needs to be revived.



Tajikistan is an overwhelmingly agricultural country, with more than 70 per cent of the population living in rural areas. Most farmers grow cotton, the principal crop.



Around 29,000 “dehkan” farms have been set up since land reform was launched in 1996 to break up the large Soviet-era collective farms.



Shukrullo Rahimnazarov, the head of the crops department at the Ministry of Agriculture, believes that despite the reorganisation, farming methods remain almost as they were in Soviet times. “The system on the farms is largely unchanged from when they were collective farms. The farmer is not the landowner, and has no say, no right to do anything new – the old system of administration by command persists,” he said.



The disastrous position of cotton production illustrates many of the wider problems facing farmers. In August, NBCentralAsia predicted that mounting debt would once again prevent farmers from fulfilling the state’s cotton production plan. Of the 11,000 farms that grow cotton, 90 per cent are in debt to “futures companies”, which provide advance credit in cash and kind, and which are themselves indebted to foreign investors. In summer, the total debt owed to futures companies was put at some 300 million dollars, the equivalent of three-quarters of Tajikistan’s annual government budget.



In addition, there are many micro-credit institutions operating in a number of regions, offering small loans to buy seeds, build up livestock, and develop bee-keeping.



NBCentralAsia’s experts say micro-credits do not address the big problems facing crop-growers. Small loan amounts, high interest rates and short repayment periods are not very attractive for private farmers who need to buy new machinery, fuel, lubricants and seeds. It costs up to 25,000 dollars to buy a tractor, and harvest income will not cover that kind of outlay.



Munira Khotambekova, an expert with the Support for Seed Propagation programme, says farmers are digging themselves into an ever deeper hole because of their indebtedness. “Lack of funds prevents these farms from buying decent machinery, fuel and mineral fertilisers to work the land,” she said.



But the problems are not all to do with debt. “In the course of the reform, some of the land was handed over to people who had never farmed. The dearth of people with a good knowledge of agricultural methods results in poor harvests,” said Khotambekova.



The sector is also held back by the lack of food processing plants. Farmers are often unable to transport their harvest to major towns, so middlemen step in and by the crops at knock-down prices. In remote mountainous areas, where the fruit is grown under ideal environmental conditions, growers often have to feed the crop to their animals.



According to Vahob Vahidov, head of agrarian industry department at the Institute for Economic Studies, the Tajik government has focused attention on major industrial projects, even though industry cannot develop without a strong agricultural sector.



NBCentralAsia analysts say the agriculture ministry could improve things for private farmers by offering financial support packages without middlemen. Once the ministry has invested in the sector, it will have an incentive to make things better. In addition, the analysts recommend establishing a bank that deals specifically with farmers.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)