Uzbek Farms Forced to Amalgamate
Uzbek Farms Forced to Amalgamate
A plan to force private farms to merge into larger units is likely to leave large numbers of rural people with neither land nor income, creating potential for unrest, NBCentralAsia observers say.
On November 9, the Muslimuzbekistan website reported claims by the Initiative Group of Human Rights Organisations of Uzbekistan that “land is being illegally confiscated from farmers by means of threats, blackmail and terror”.
The human rights group alleged that local government chiefs in the Fergana, Andijan, Tashkent, Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya regions were forcing farmers to surrender the land they lease from the state.
A few days earlier, the Uzmetronom internet site reported that “95 per cent of farmers in Tashkent region had been coerced by police into signing ‘voluntary’ applications to hand their land back”.
These media outlets note that local government officials have cited an unpublished decree by President Islam Karimov as justification for the land seizures. This decree is said to contain instructions to “expand farmland”, and some analysts are comparing it to the creation of large collective farms in the Soviet period.
Commentators in Uzbekistan say the new policy was first hinted at on October 3, when President Karimov visited the Khorezm region in the north-west of the country.
“President Karimov said he had decided to amalgamate farms which have less than 80 hectares of land, so as to use agricultural equipment more efficiently,” said one local observer.
The argument Karimov used was that a smallholder has no need for farm machinery, so does not buy it. Nor can farmers on low incomes afford to buy items like combine harvesters or cotton-harvesting machines.
Government figures show that there are more than 215,000 private farms employing about 1.5 million people in Uzbekistan.
There are fears that “collectivisation” could halve the number of farms, leading to wide-scale unemployment.
A farmer in the Fergana region said, “A small farm now provides work for all of the farmer’s family, but when the land is pooled, the head of the expanded farm unit will hire his own peasants and the families of those who’ve joined it will be left without work.”
The farmer added that everyone wanted to own their own land, no matter how small.
Agriculture experts believe the amalgamation will make it easier for government to tell farmers what to do.
“Once, say, a hundred farms have been merged into one, it will be easier to keep them under control and direct what they grow, and how much of it, at any one time,” said an analyst in Tashkent.
All land remains in the hands of the state, while the 1998 Land Code gives farmers the right to lease it for a 49-year period.
Every year, leaseholders have to sign a contract with the local authorities committing them to sell a proportion of their wheat or cotton crop to the state a discount price.
Mamurjon Azimov, a farmer in the Jizak land region of central Uzbekistan, does not want to work for others when he can survive on his own as a smallholder.
He grows enough wheat on his four hectares of land to supply the amount the state requires for him and also to keep his extended family provided with flour until the following year’s harvest.
“That means you can make a profit from an area of land much smaller than 80 hectares,” he said. “If they amalgamate us now, we’ll be made to work as hired labour for other leaseholders and our families will go hungry.”
NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service resumed in 2008, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
On November 9, the Muslimuzbekistan website reported claims by the Initiative Group of Human Rights Organisations of Uzbekistan that “land is being illegally confiscated from farmers by means of threats, blackmail and terror”.
The human rights group alleged that local government chiefs in the Fergana, Andijan, Tashkent, Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya regions were forcing farmers to surrender the land they lease from the state.
A few days earlier, the Uzmetronom internet site reported that “95 per cent of farmers in Tashkent region had been coerced by police into signing ‘voluntary’ applications to hand their land back”.
These media outlets note that local government officials have cited an unpublished decree by President Islam Karimov as justification for the land seizures. This decree is said to contain instructions to “expand farmland”, and some analysts are comparing it to the creation of large collective farms in the Soviet period.
Commentators in Uzbekistan say the new policy was first hinted at on October 3, when President Karimov visited the Khorezm region in the north-west of the country.
“President Karimov said he had decided to amalgamate farms which have less than 80 hectares of land, so as to use agricultural equipment more efficiently,” said one local observer.
The argument Karimov used was that a smallholder has no need for farm machinery, so does not buy it. Nor can farmers on low incomes afford to buy items like combine harvesters or cotton-harvesting machines.
Government figures show that there are more than 215,000 private farms employing about 1.5 million people in Uzbekistan.
There are fears that “collectivisation” could halve the number of farms, leading to wide-scale unemployment.
A farmer in the Fergana region said, “A small farm now provides work for all of the farmer’s family, but when the land is pooled, the head of the expanded farm unit will hire his own peasants and the families of those who’ve joined it will be left without work.”
The farmer added that everyone wanted to own their own land, no matter how small.
Agriculture experts believe the amalgamation will make it easier for government to tell farmers what to do.
“Once, say, a hundred farms have been merged into one, it will be easier to keep them under control and direct what they grow, and how much of it, at any one time,” said an analyst in Tashkent.
All land remains in the hands of the state, while the 1998 Land Code gives farmers the right to lease it for a 49-year period.
Every year, leaseholders have to sign a contract with the local authorities committing them to sell a proportion of their wheat or cotton crop to the state a discount price.
Mamurjon Azimov, a farmer in the Jizak land region of central Uzbekistan, does not want to work for others when he can survive on his own as a smallholder.
He grows enough wheat on his four hectares of land to supply the amount the state requires for him and also to keep his extended family provided with flour until the following year’s harvest.
“That means you can make a profit from an area of land much smaller than 80 hectares,” he said. “If they amalgamate us now, we’ll be made to work as hired labour for other leaseholders and our families will go hungry.”
NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service resumed in 2008, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)
